Center News

David Lange receives Distinguished Teaching Award
Professor David Lange, Faculty Co-Director, receives the Duke Bar Association's Distinguished Teaching Award for 2009. More.

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.

Economic Perspectives on Abstract Subject Matter Patents
Professor Arti Rai, Faculty Co-Director, chaired this recent panel discussion as part of a joint Brookings Institution, CCIA, and Duke Law School conference on "The Limits of Abstract Patents in an Intangible Economy." Read the transcript.

Professor James Boyle encourages rethinking intellectual property rights
Bad intellectual property policy unnecessarily locks up our cultural heritage, Boyle says. » FLYP

The Public Domain: Enclosing the Commons of the Mind
Faculty Co-Director James Boyle's new book 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. Visit the book's web site to read the book online, check the reviews, and more.
The Public Domain wins 2008 McGannon Award.
[ buy the book ]

COMMUNIA The European Thematic Network on the Digital Public Domain
The Center for the Study of the Public Domain recently became 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 and its goals at more.

Professor Arti Rai, Faculty Co-Director Owning Knowledge: Science, Health and Law in an Integrated World
Arti Rai, Faculty Co-Director, participated in this panel presented by Columbia University's Committee on Global Thought, with Sherry Glied, Joseph Stiglitz, Sir John Sulston, and Harold Varmus. Watch the discussion.

Multilingual Educational Resources about Intellectual Property and the Public Domain
Center launches new website offering translations of educational resources in Chinese, French, Portuguese and Spanish, in effort 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)

Intellectual Property: Specialized Courts: Lessons from the Federal Circuit
Faculty Co-Director Arti Rai was part of a panel discussing the effectiveness of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit as part of the Federalist Society's 2008 National Lawyers Convention. [ view the video | more information ]

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:

What the information superhighways aren't built of... On how to think about applying the lessons of the Internet to scientific research
Misunderstanding open science On the Fair Copyright in Research Works Act recently introduced by Representative John Conyers that will transform access to federally funded information
Obama's team must fight 'cultural agoraphobia' On creating the World Wide Web and would we do it again?
Book-burning, legal style On the cultural effects of copyright term extensions, particularly in light of the proposed European Union extension of copyright for sound recordings
A creative coup for the trainspotters On the recent decision by the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit upholding the validity of ‘open source’ licensing agreements
A Czar for the Digital Peasants On the Prioritizing Resources and Organization for Intellectual Property Act of 2008 (“Pro-IP” Act) that was recently signed into law
Sacrificing at the alter of patents On WHO efforts to encourage drug development for diseases of the global poor through alternatives to patents
And the band played on... On the failure of governments to heed evidence when deciding intellectual property policy

Professor James Boyle at
Google's Zeitgeist Europe 2008
Boyle discusses copyright and moderates a panel on "Copyfight" with Erick Hachenburg, Eric Baptiste, and Gilberto Gil (panel | Q&A). You can also watch Gil's performance. See more videos from Zeitgeist Europe 2008.

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