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the natural state of all intellectual property unless kept secret or specifically withdrawn by force of law
Definitions from the Center for the Public Domain
The public domain is a space where intellectual property protection does not apply. When copyrights and patents expire, innovations and creative works fall into the public domain. They may then be used by anyone without permission and without the payment of a licensing fee.
A commons is a place, a real physical space or an more ephermal information space, that is not privately owned. Natural commons include the oceans and the atmosphere. Garrett Hardin's famous essay "The Tragedy of the Commons" (Science 162:1243, 1968) argued that such commons would inevitably be degraded and used up - like a village commons where everyone would feed their livestock until there was no grass remaining. Information commons hold the shared history of our cultures, such as myths and folksongs. Information commons are unique, because as ideas are taken from them to provide inspiration, they are not used up. Those ideas remain for the use of future generations of creators.
Reclaiming the Commons: Why we need to protect our public resources from
private encroachment.
by David Bollier
Boston Review, 2003
One of the great questions of contemporary American
political economy is, who shall control the commons? "The commons" refers to
that vast range of resources that the American people collectively own, but
which are rapidly being enclosed: privatized, traded in the market, and abused.
This wide array of creations of nature and society is what we inherit freely,
share and hold in trust for future generations. The process of converting the
American commons into market resources can accurately be described as enclosure
because, like the movement to enclose common lands in eighteenth-century
England, it involves the private appropriation of collectively owned resources.
Such enclosures are troubling because they disproportionately benefit the
corporate class and effectively deprive ordinary citizens of access to resources
that they legally or morally own. The result is a hypertrophic market that
colonizes untouched natural resources and public life while eroding our
democratic commonwealth. ...
The fact that people volunteer their time to work on community gardens, or that
scientists openly share their research results with trusted colleagues, or that
people post useful information on the Internet for free, seems aberrational or
at least marginal in terms of conventional economic thinking. But while
cooperation may not conform to the general rule of rationally self-interested
behavior, the efficacy of social negotiation and cooperation can be seen in
dozens of smaller-scale commons.
The Future of Ideas
Lawrence Lessig, 2001
The opportunity for individuals to draw upon resources without connections, permission, or access granted by others. They are environments that commit themselves to being open. Individuals and corporations draw upon the value created by this openness. They transform that value into other value, which they then consume privately.
One of the most urgent but unacknowledged challenges of our
time is the preservation of a large and robust public domain. The public domain
is the cultural space in which we share information, creativity and ideas. Like
an ecosystem, the public domain can remain healthy only if its relationship with
the market -- as embodied in intellectual property law, technology and social
practice -- is in balance. In recent years, sweeping changes in markets,
technology and law have upset this balance. The results challenge the vitality
of artistic creativity, academic research, technological innovation, and our
democratic culture. This affects creators and innovators because new work
depends critically upon the body of work that precedes it.
Even as the Internet and global commerce are democratizing access to art,
science and other kinds of information, they are also rapidly converting content
that was once freely available to everyone into closed, proprietary "product."
The kinds and amount of information that can be privatized and commercialized
have dramatically expanded. Knowledge that was previously unpatentable --
ranging from crop strains and genetically engineered mice to business method
ideas -- are now routinely patented. Copyrighted works are now protected for
longer periods of time and more draconian penalties are imposed for
infringement. New technological protection measures and unprecedented licensing
arrangements are also curtailing people's rights to use information in the
digital environment.
The paradoxical result is that legal regimes that are meant to foster
innovation, creativity, competition and public access to knowledge are
frequently having the opposite effects.
A non-profit citizens group. Our mission is to protect and enhance the public domain in matters concerning intellectual property. We are a membership organization, acting as an independent voice on intellectual property issues.
PD Info - Public Domain Music
A reference site to help identify public domain songs and public domain music . . . royalty free music you can use anywhere and any way you choose . . . performance, sing-along, film, video, advertising, business, or personal.
Public Domain Images finds visuals in Washington, D.C., home
of the world's largest public domain collections of: Photographs & Slides Films,
Motion Pictures & Videos Illustrations & Drawings Maps, Charts & Aerial Images
Paintings & Posters Animations & Cartoons
For almost any subject! You'll get the image content you need, quickly &
inexpensively.
Public Domain Music - MIDI files and text files of their lyrics
The oldest producer of free electronic books (eBooks or etexts) on the Internet. Our collection of more than 12.000 eBooks was produced by hundreds of volunteers. Most of the Project Gutenberg eBooks are older literary works that are in the public domain in the United States.
For Use in Multimedia Projects and Web Pages
Most of the images in these collections are in the public domain. Though you may
not need to ask permission to use them when publishing on the Web for
educational purposes, you still must cite these images unless otherwise
notified! If you see any copyright notices on these pages, read them for further
instructions.
The Public Domain Enhancement Act
Creative Commons' Public Domain license
Creativity and innovation rely on a rich heritage of prior intellectual endeavor. We stand on the shoulders of giants by revisiting, reusing, and transforming the ideas and works of our peers and predecessors.
Thomas Jefferson wrote in 1813:
If nature has made any one thing less susceptible than all
others of exclusive property, it is the action of the thinking power called an
idea, which an individual may exclusively possess as long as he keeps it to
himself; but the moment it is divulged, it forces itself into the possession of
every one, and the receiver cannot dispossess himself of it. Its peculiar
character, too, is that no one possesses the less, because every other possesses
the whole of it.
He who receives an idea from me, receives instruction himself without lessening
mine; as he who lights his taper at mine, receives light without darkening me.
That ideas should freely spread from one to another over the globe, for the
moral and mutual instruction of man, and improvement of his condition, seems to
have been peculiarly and benevolently designed by nature, when she made them,
like fire, expansible over all space, without lessening their density in any
point, and like the air in which we breathe, move and have our physical being,
incapable of confinement or exclusive appropriation.
Inventions then cannot, in nature, be a subject of property. Society may give an
exclusive right to the profits arising from them, as an encouragement to men to
pursue ideas which may produce utility, but this may or may not be done,
according to the will and convenience of the society, without claim or complaint
from anybody... The exclusive right to invention [is] given not of natural
right, but for the benefit of society.
The US Constitution is one of those societies that has legal protection for intellectual property (article 1, section 8).
The Congress shall have power to promote the progress of science and useful arts, by securing for limited times to authors and inventors the exclusive right to their respective writings and discoveries.
That's all the Constitution says. The laws regulating copyrights
are in Title 17 of the US
Code of Laws and those regulating patents are in
Title 35.
Thus, patents, trademarks and copyrights are obtained through application to
federal government agencies and defended by lawsuits in federal courts against
infringers. Trade secrets are different.
for inventions that are novel, useful, and non-obvious
After the patent is issued, it is publicly disclosed to encourage others to learn from it, commercialize it, and improve it. It lasts no more than 20 years.
Search by "Assignee Name" to keep track of all the pending and approved patent activity by a specific company, such as your competitor.
Apple Computer's
approved patents and
pending applications
Google's
pending and
approved
TiVo's
pending and
approved,
Yahoo's
pending and
approved.
Several blogs focus on new patents:
Patently
Obvious
Patent
Pending
Fresh
Patents
for only the printed word or image (logo) referencing a product or service in commerce
It lasts as long as it is used.
for the manner of expression only, not for the content, the information, or the concept
You cannot copyright an idea. You cannot copyright the plot of a story or the design of a dress or the recipe for a dessert. Copyright lasts for a "limited time", now a long time that always gets longer, never shorter as the corporate copyright holders expand their power and influence. Learn more about the importance of a free culture.
for information that employees, vendors, and consultants need to do their jobs
in general, the organization's collective
knowledge about what works and what doesn't work, what has happened in the past
and what is planned for the future.
specifically, customer lists, formulas, manufacturing processes,
strategic plans, customer service and personnel procedures, financial results
and forecasts
Trade secrets require no disclosure to the government. Unlike patents, they
don't have to be novel or non-obvious, only useful. Unlike copyrights, they
cover the content as well as the expression. The only requirement is that trade
secrets be kept secret, and the burden is on the organization to do so.
No federal laws protect trade secrets. Protection requires that the organization
establish the information as secret and make a continuous effort to maintain the
information as secret. Once the information is "out", the organization can fire
or sue the person responsible, but it can't take back the information. The
organization cannot sue the person who received the information nor can it keep
the receiver from using or selling the information, though it often wants to.
U.S. Intellectual Property Information
A guide for non-lawyers from the Franklin Pierce Law Center. Discusses the leg-work necessary before you file (prior art search), strategies for seeking cost-effective patents, and avoiding patent, trademark, and copyright problems.
Lexis Battles An Internet Upstart Over Distributing Case Law
Online
Wall Street Journal, 15 May 2000
U.S. District Judge Jed S. Rakoff is expected to issue a
preliminary ruling that will decide whether Jurisline.com, an Internet company
that offers gargantuan databases of court
opinions copied from CD-ROMs by another company called Lexis, violates federal
law. Jurisline's creator, Lee Eichen, leased Lexis's Law on Disc set in 1999,
copied the information, and then posted it online. Jurisline provides free
access to the information, selling advertising space to other companies to make
a profit. ...
Lexis, which ironically built its own large databases by copying from a company
called West Publishing, argues that Jurisline's actions could negate years of
effort and large sums of money spent to acquire the information it leases
online. ...
The Supreme Court ruled in a 1991 telephone book case that "sweat of
brow" when compiling a directory out of large amounts of non-copyrighted
information does not qualify the collector for legal protection.
Are
Intellectual Property Rights a Digital Dilemma? Controversial Topics and
International Aspects
by Henry M. Gladney
iMP: Information Impacts Magazine, February 2000
Students Flunk Intellectual Property Rights 101
Universities are increasingly facing problems with students violating
copyrights, and some experts say students do not understand the issues
surrounding intellectual property. Several schools have blocked their network's
access to Napster software, which students were using to obtain digital music
that is often pirated. In addition, students are selling lecture notes to
private companies, while some experts maintain that the copyright to the notes
belongs to either the professor or the university. Students also violate
copyright laws on software. The Software and Information Industry Association
says 47 percent of the software on college students' PCs is copied rather than
bought. Professor Paul Goldstein, who teaches copyright law at Stanford,
conducted a study in which he asked a group of students whether they would steal
a six-pack of a soft drink or photocopy a book, knowing they would not be caught
in either case. Most students felt that shoplifting the six-pack was wrong
because the grocer would lose money, and said they would not steal the item.
However, most students also said they would copy the book, because the material
would remain in the book for others to use, Goldstein says.
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