EvidenceSheet
ISO/IEC 27002:2022 · Organizational controls

5.32 Intellectual property rights

Suitable procedures are to be put in place to protect intellectual property rights. Purpose: comply with the legal, regulatory and contractual requirements concerning intellectual property and the use of proprietary products. Guidance: to protect anything that can count as intellectual property, consider a topic-specific policy on intellectual property protection, communicated to those it concerns; publishing compliance procedures that define lawful use of software and information products; buying software only from known, reputable sources so copyright is not infringed; keeping asset registers that flag every asset with intellectual property protection needs; keeping proof of ownership of licences, manuals and similar; ensuring licence limits on users or resources such as CPUs are not exceeded; checking installations so that nothing unlicensed or unapproved is present; procedures to keep licence conditions met; procedures for getting rid of software or handing it on; respecting the conditions attached to software and content taken from public networks or other outside sources; not duplicating, converting or extracting from commercial audio or video recordings beyond what copyright law or licences allow; and not reproducing all or part of published works such as standards, books, papers or reports beyond what copyright or licences permit. Other information: intellectual property covers copyright in software and documents, designs, trade marks, patents and licences to source code; proprietary software licences commonly restrict use to named machines or limit copying to backups (see ISO/IEC 19770); data acquired from outside is normally covered by a data sharing agreement that should state permitted processing and provenance (ISO/IEC 23751); infringement can bring fines and criminal proceedings; and the risk of staff or third parties failing to respect the organization's own intellectual property should also be managed.

Source: ISO/IEC 27002:2022, 5.32. The statement above is our statement of the clause, read from the published text and cited so you can check it against the official text, not the instrument verbatim. Open ISO/IEC 27002:2022 in the compliance library.

ISO/IEC 27002 is guidance on the Annex A controls; certification is against ISO/IEC 27001. Use this set when your sheet follows the 27002 numbering.

6
artefacts
0
held by a system
1
at each review
hard
to go live
Policy repository / GRC workspace
where the evidence lives
teal = a system already holds it · olive = produced at each review. To go live: easy when half or more of the artefacts are already held by a system, moderate from a quarter to a half, hard below a quarter.

These are the artefacts auditors commonly ask for on this requirement, our guidance rather than text from the standard. Your assessor decides what is sufficient in your context, and asks for samples across the period when a report covers one.

system holds itEvidence a system already holds

none for this control

periodic reviewEvidence produced at each review

  • Approved software sources and purchasing records showing acquisition from reputable suppliers · Vendor register / contract repository

governing documentDocuments that govern the control

  • The topic-specific intellectual property policy and compliance procedures for use of software and information products · Policy repository / GRC workspace
  • A software asset register flagging assets with intellectual property requirements and linked proof of licence ownership · Policy repository / GRC workspace
  • Licence compliance reviews reconciling installed software and resource usage (users, CPUs) against entitlements · Policy repository / GRC workspace
  • Data sharing agreements for externally acquired data stating permitted processing and provenance · Vendor register / contract repository
  • Procedures for retiring software or handing licences on to another party · Policy repository / GRC workspace

First move

No system holds this evidence for you: it is people and documents. Reminders and routing to the owner still save time. Put the document under version control with an owner and review date, and log each review as a record with reviewer and date.

Common gaps auditors find

Do this for your whole sheet

Paste the rows you run your controls from and get this mapping for every control at once, with the periodic-review ones flagged and a first move per row. No account for the first run.

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5.31 Legal, statutory, regulatory and contractual requirements · 5.33 Protection of records