Law School to host Conference on the Public Domain November 9-11

The last fifteen years has seen a rise in both the importance and the strength of intellectual property rights in the world economy.

Is this expansion of intellectual property necessary to respond to new copying technologies, and desirable because it will produce investment and innovation? Must we privatize the public domain, or can the technologies of cheap copying and global networks actually make common pool management more efficient than legal monopolies? Questions such as these have thrown attention on the "other side" of intellectual property: the public domain. What does the public domain do? What is its importance, its history, its role in science, art, and in the building of the Internet?

With the support of the Center for the Public Domain, this conference – the first major meeting to focus squarely on this topic – will try to answer some of these questions in areas ranging from the human genome to the architecture of our communications networks.

For more information, including details about registration and accommodations, visit the conference web site at www.law.duke.edu/pd/.

• Visit the Center for the Public Domain's web site