Center News
Who steals the gene from off the common
Faculty Co-Director James Boyle discusses the importance of open research collaboration for science in his latest column for the Financial Times.
Copycats vs copyrights
CSPD Faculty Co-Director Prof. James Boyle and CSPD Director Prof. Jennifer Jenkins weigh in on extending copyright protections to the fashion industry as proposed by Senator Charles Schumer (D-NY) in his recently introduced 'Innovative Design Protection and Piracy Prevention Act.' » Newsweek
The Incredible Shrinking Public Domain
Faculty Co-Director James Boyle discusses innovation, creativity and copyright at ORGCon in London. » watch the video
Theft! A History of Music
Jennifer Jenkins, Director of the CSPD, discusses the history of music and and the effects of law on musical creativity at ORGCon in London. » watch the video
Racconti dal pubblico dominio : Prigioniera della Legge ?
The Center's graphic novel, Tales from the Public Domain: Bound By Law?, is now available in an Italian translation by Deborah De Angelis of DDA Studio Legale and Lorenzo De Tomasi of Isotype.org.
Leggi il fumetto (online o in formato PDF) / Read the comic book (online or PDF).
The future of open access in scientific research
Faculty Co-Director James Boyle is named one of seven Science 2.0 Pioneers by The New York Academy of Sciences Magazine. In the article, he discusses the growing importance of open access to scientific research. » more
Patent Reform: Unleashing Innovation, Promoting Economic Growth & Producing High-Paying Jobs
Arti Rai, currently Administrator, Office of External Affairs, at the USPTO, is the co-author of a recent Commerce Department white paper on the key role of technological innovation in economic growth and the importance of reforming U.S. patent law to encourage innovation. » more
Les Contes du Domaine Public : Prisonnière de la Loi ?
The Center's graphic novel, Tales of the Public Domain: Bound By Law?, is now available in a French translation by Professor Jean-François Le Ruyet and his students at the University of Nantes Faculty of Law. Read the French translation [Online or PDF] / Lire la traduction français [en ligne ou en PDF].
Hot news: The next bad thing
Faculty Co-Director Professor James Boyle discusses the state of newspapers on the Internet and the latest attempts to create a "monopoly" to protect them. » Financial Times
Intellectual Property in the Twenty-first Century: Will the Developing Countries Lead or Follow?
Professor Jerome Reichman, Faculty Co-Director, discusses critical economic and intellectual property issues for developing countries in a recent article in the Houston Law Review (46 Hous. L. Rev. 1115 (2009)).
Free: Why Authors are Giving Books Away on the Internet
Faculty Co-Director Professor James Boyle is one of the authors featured by James Hilton III and Professor David Wiley of Brigham Young University in this article focusing on the motivations and economics of offering free ebooks. » March/April 2010 issue of TechTrends
Collective Management of Copyrights and Human Rights: An Uneasy Alliance Revisited
Professor Laurence Helfer contributes a chapter on "creators' rights" to a forthcoming book on collected management from Kluwer Law International. » Read the essay
Green Technology and Intellectual Property
Faculty Co-Director Jerome Reichman was a panelist in the recent Duke Law Intellectual Property and Cyberlaw Society's "Hot Topics in Intellectual Property Symposium." » View the webcast
Music Sampling
"We really have never had a rich fair use discussion about sampling and hip-hop, inside a courtroom, which is remarkable," says Faculty Co-Director Professor James Boyle. » On The Media
Unstandard standardization: the case of biology
Faculty Co-Director Arti Rai discusses whether the approaches adopted by information and communication technology standards-setting organizations can be applied to biological standards in an article in the January 2010 edition of Communications of the ACM.
Golan v. Holder: Does Restoring Copyright in Foreign Works violate the First Amendment?
Faculty Co-Director David Lange is part of a panel at GWU Law School discussing this important case now before the 10th Circuit. Listen to the podcast.
Center for the Study of the Public Domain supports The Public Domain Manifesto
COMMUNIA, the European thematic network on the public domain, has drafted a Manifesto that "aims at reminding citizens and policy-makers of a common wealth that, since it belongs to all, [] is often defended by no-one." » more
Appropriation. Plagiarism. When it comes to writing, what do these terms mean?
Professor James Boyle, Faculty Co-Director, takes part in a panel discussion about free-appropriation writers on Connecticut Public Radio's Colin McEnroe Show.
Perspectives on Access to Knowledge and Human Rights
Professor Laurence Helfer, Duke Law School, discussed the propertization of intellectual discoveries and developments and other issues at the intersection of IP rights and human rights as a panelist at Yale Law School's recent A2K4 Conference.
The future of authorship and the role of the public domain in fostering creativity
Faculty Co-Director James Boyle is interviewed as part of the Tulane Journal of Technology and Intellectual Property's recent Conversations with Renowned Professors on the Future of Copyright (12 Tul. J. Tech. & Intell. Prop. 35, 84-99 (2009)).
Faculty Co-Director James Boyle discusses 'cultural agoraphobia' at FICOD09 in Madrid
Professor Boyle was a featured speaker at Spain's annual International Forum on Web Content. Watch the video (English). Professor Boyle also spoke with Madrid daily ABC about the future of journalism in an Internet world - read the interview (in Spanish).
The Public Domain: Enclosing the Commons of the Mind
Faculty Co-Director James Boyle's book, recently named American Society for Information Science and Technology Book of the Year for 2009, explores the importance of the public domain to music, culture, science, and economic welfare and explains what we must do to protect it. Prof. Boyle discusses the book on BBC's In Business, NPR, North Carolina Public Radio, Connecticut Public Radio, and BBC's Thinking Allowed. In addition to the ASIST honor, The Public Domain received the 2008 McGannon Award from Fordham University’s Donald McGannon Communication Research Center. Visit the book's web site to read the book online, check the reviews, and more; or buy the book.
Faculty Co-Director Arti Rai joins USPTO
Professor Rai is currently serving as administrator for external affairs with the Patent and Trademark Office, where, among other duties, she serves as a policy adviser to USPTO director David Kappos and works with Congress on domestic patent reform legislation. » more | » USPTO's website
2009 Nobel laureate Elinor Ostrom, recognized for her work in governing the commons, was persuaded by the Duke Conference on the Public Domain to write an article for the Center's Collected Papers, applying her ideas to intellectual property and the intangible commons.
The Crime of the (20th) Century: How we threw away our cultural heritage for no good reason (and whether Google Books will bring it back)
Professor James Boyle, Faculty Co-Director, discusses the public domain, its erosion by copyright, and the Google Books project. »View his talk at the University of North Carolina.
The benefits and challenges of data sharing and data archiving
"[A]t least one [person] has a smarter idea about what to do with your content than you do," says Prof. James Boyle, Faculty Co-Director. Read more about it in this recent article from Nature.
Misunderstanding Open Science
Professor James Boyle, Faculty Co-Director, speaks out about the dangers posed by a recently introduced bill that would restrict public access to taxpayer-funded research information. Read his Financial Times column or listen to his comments on American Public Media's Marketplace.
Intellectual property protection of databases, and alternative regimes to reconcile public science with the commercialization of research results
Professor Jerome H. Reichman, Faculty Co-Director, and Tracy Lewis are principal investigators on Duke University's Center for Public Genomics project that explores alternatives to the current intellectual property regime in genomics including a possible microbial commons. Find out more.
Economic Perspectives on Abstract Subject Matter Patents
Professor Arti Rai, Faculty Co-Director, chairs the panel discussion of a joint Brookings Institution, CCIA, and Duke Law School conference on "The Limits of Abstract Patents in an Intangible Economy." Read the transcript.
COMMUNIA The European Thematic Network on the Digital Public Domain
The Center for the Study of the Public Domain is a member of the COMMUNIA Thematic Network, devoted to developing analysis and policy recommendations surrounding public domain issues in Europe and beyond. Learn more about COMMUNIA, its goals and its projects.
Owning Knowledge: Science, Health and Law in an Integrated World
Arti Rai, Faculty Co-Director, joins Sherry Glied, Joseph Stiglitz, Sir John Sulston, and Harold Varmus in a panel discussion presented by Columbia University's Committee on Global Thought. Watch the discussion.
Multilingual Educational Resources about Intellectual Property and the Public Domain
Find Chinese, French, Portuguese and Spanish translations of educational resources created for the Center to promote greater awareness and understanding about IP and the public domain. Visit the site.
Is Bayh-Dole Good for Developing Countries? Lessons from the US Experience
Faculty Co-Directors Arti Rai and Jerome Reichman and Senior Fellow Anthony So offer insights for developing countries considering laws modeled on the US Bayh-Dole Act of 1980 (with Bhaven N Sampat, Robert Cook-Deegan, Robert Weissman, and Amy Kapczynski). (read the article)
The Case for Public Funding and Public Oversight of Clinical Trials
Faculty Co-Director Jerome Reichman and Senior Fellow Dr. Anthony So argue in The Economists' Voice that clinical drug trials are public goods and should be publicly funded to avoid undersupply, suppression of adverse results, and other problems (with Tracy Lewis) (read)
IP and Synthetic Biology
Read Faculty Co-Director Arti Rai's seminal articles about intellectual property and "synthetic biology" - the attempt to construct new biological functions and systems, starting at the genetic level: Synthetic Biology: The Intellectual Property Puzzle (with Sapna Kumar) and Synthetic Biology: Caught Between Property Rights, the Public Domain, and the Commons (with James Boyle). Here Professor Rai's recent lecture on The Paradigm Shift of Synthetic Biology: Tensions Between Innovation and Security given at the University of Minnesota [ more information ].
Financial Times New Economy Policy Forum
Faculty Co-Director James Boyle is one of four regular columnists for the Financial Times online-edition's New Technology Policy Forum, where the columnists debate regulatory and legal issues generated by - and also shaping - high-tech industries. Recent columns:
7 Ways To Ruin A Technological Revolution
If you wanted to undermine the technological revolution of the last 30 years, using the law, how would you do it? Faculty Co-Director James Boyle provides answers at a Google Tech Talk. View the webcast
LAW.GOV
Kip and Meredith Frey Lecture in Intellectual Property
Professor James Boyle, "A Song's Tale: Mashups, Borrowing and the Law"
Professor Michael Carroll: "Musicians in Copyright's Federated Domain"
Professor James Boyle offers a sneak peek at the Center's new comic book
To Clear or not to Clear
Disappearing History?
Great Composers Steal
