scholarly journals Defining the public domain in economic terms: Approaches and consequences for policy

2016 ◽  
Vol 10 (1) ◽  
pp. 61
Author(s):  
Kristofer Erickson
Keyword(s):  
Intellectual Property ◽  
Consumer Surplus ◽  
Public Domain ◽  
Creative Economy ◽  
Access To Information ◽  
Policy Objective ◽  
The Public ◽  
Policy Lever ◽  
Innovation Approach ◽  
The Uk

<p>Stimulating innovation and growth in the so-called ‘creative economy’ is a current policy objective for national regulators. One policy lever traditionally applied to the creative sector is intellectual property, in particular the scope and term of protection offered by copyright. Opposition to expansion and further enclosure of the copyright public domain was previously articulated in terms of access to a commons of information. Since the Hargreaves Review of Intellectual Property in 2011, copyright reform in the UK context is increasingly framed in the language of economics.   This paper reviews two prevailing economic theories shaping how policy makers discuss the public domain in debates about IP reform: a welfare economics approach which weighs increases in producer and consumer surplus under different policy configurations and an economics of innovation approach which considers the value of the public domain as a reservoir of ideas for individuals and firms.  I argue that economic definitions should be augmented by a consideration of the democratic requirement of access to information. The consequences of this re-figuration of the public domain for the public interest and access to information are discussed.</p>

scholarly journals Governing Knowledge: Intellectual Property Management for Development and the Public Interest

2015 ◽  
Vol 66 ◽  
pp. 69-88
Author(s):  
Leonardo Burlamaqui
Keyword(s):  
Intellectual Property ◽  
Public Interest ◽  
Public Domain ◽  
Policy Recommendations ◽  
Public And Private ◽  
The Public ◽  
Private Interests ◽  
Intellectual Property Management ◽  
Analytical Perspective ◽  
The Right

The core point of this paper is the hypothesis that in the field of intellectual property rights and regulations, the last three decades witnessed a big change. The boundaries of private (or corporate) interests have been hyper-expanded while the public domain has significantly contracted. It tries to show that this is detrimental to innovation diffusion and productivity growth. The paper develops the argument theoretically, fleshes it out with some empirical evidence and provides a few policy recommendations on how to redesign the frontiers between public and private spaces in order to produce a more democratic and development-oriented institutional landscape. The proposed analytical perspective developed here, “Knowledge Governance”, aims to provide a framework within which, in the field of knowledge creation and diffusion, the dividing line between private interests and the public domain ought to be redrawn. The paper’s key goal is to provide reasoning for a set of rules, regulatory redesign and institutional coordination that would favor the commitment to distribute (disseminate) over the right to exclude.Keywords: knowledge management, intellectual property, patent, public, interest, public sector, private sector, socioeconomic developmen

scholarly journals Property on the Line: Life on the Frontier between Copyright and the Public Domain

2013 ◽  
Vol 44 (1) ◽  
pp. 1
Author(s):  
Graeme W Austin
Keyword(s):  
Human Rights ◽  
Intellectual Property ◽  
Public Domain ◽  
Copyright Law ◽  
Human Rights Law ◽  
Line Life ◽  
The Public ◽  
Inaugural Lecture ◽  
Creativity And Innovation ◽  
The Relationship

This article is an edited transcript of Professor Graeme W Austin's Inaugural Lecture, delivered in the Council Chamber of Victoria University of Wellington on 15 November 2012. Professor Austin was appointed Chair in Private Law in the Faculty of Law in November 2010. This lecture explores claims that in copyright law, the public domain is necessarily in opposition to proprietary rights, and suggests that in many contexts the incentives offered by copyright contribute to the vibrancy and volume of material that is available for downstream creativity and innovation. Drawing on his earlier work on the relationship between human rights law and intellectual property, Professor Austin's lecture advances the idea that cognisance of the human rights dimensions of intellectual property, including creators' human rights, should inform our understanding of the appropriate scope of the rights of copyright owners. The lecture concludes with a warning against the "Walmartization" of copyright.

scholarly journals Guarding a Cultural Icon: Concurrent Intellectual Property Regimes and the Perpetual Protection of Anne of Green Gables in Canada

2011 ◽  
Vol 56 (4) ◽  
pp. 1011-1055 ◽  
Author(s):  
Andrea Slane
Keyword(s):  
Intellectual Property ◽  
Public Interest ◽  
Public Domain ◽  
The Other ◽  
Property Law ◽  
Cultural Significance ◽  
The Public ◽  
Public Benefit ◽  
Anne Of Green Gables ◽  
Property Regimes

This article uses the various intellectual property protections afforded to the classic children’s novel Anne of Green Gables as a means of illustrating the blurring between copyright, trademark, and official marks regimes in Canada. By not keeping these regimes distinct, the author argues, Canadian intellectual property law seriously threatens the integrity of the public domain, a central means by which an appropriate balance is struck between the interests of authors, other cultural producers, and the public at large. The blurring between regimes is located in three conceptual sites: origin in copyright versus source in trademark; reputation in copyright versus goodwill in trademark; and the weak requirement that a public authority serve a "public benefit" in order to qualify for official marks protection, without any consideration of the public interest served by the limitations on protections built into the other intellectual property regimes. Reinforcing the distinctions between regimes and clarifying the public benefit requirement for official marks would help protect the public domain from unjustified encroachments that potentially deprive us of access to creative works of shared cultural significance.

Public domain art in an age of easier mechanical reproducibility

2006 ◽  
Vol 31 (3) ◽  
pp. 11-15
Author(s):  
Kenneth Hamma
Keyword(s):  
Education Research ◽  
Intellectual Property ◽  
Cultural Heritage ◽  
Public Good ◽  
Intellectual Property Rights ◽  
Public Domain ◽  
Information Environment ◽  
Digital Resources ◽  
Non Profit ◽  
The Public

The current information environment presents opportunities for sharing information and enhancing the public domain of creative resources for education, research and the public good. Because the sharing paradigm for digital resources is fundamentally different from any we experienced in the analog world, practices of non-profit cultural heritage collecting institutions should be re-examined and re-evaluated with respect to aligning mission with new opportunities. One practice that deserves attention, particularly in this new environment, is the continued assertion of intellectual property rights in images of creative works that are themselves in the public domain.

Stratigraphy of the oil and gas reservoirs: UK Continental Shelf

1991 ◽  
Vol 14 (1) ◽  
pp. 9-18 ◽  
Author(s):  
Stewart Brown
Keyword(s):  
Continental Shelf ◽  
North Sea ◽  
Oil And Gas ◽  
Sedimentary Basins ◽  
Public Domain ◽  
The Public ◽  
The North ◽  
Marine Gravity ◽  
The North Sea ◽  
The Uk

The petroliferous sedimentary basins of the UK Continental Shelf are remarkable for the diversity of their reservoir strata. Reservoir rocks in fields currently in production range in age from Devonian to earliest Eocene, but significant hydrocarbon discoveries have also been made in rocks as as young as the mid-Eocene. The reservoirs are predominantly siliciclastic rocks, with facies ranging from continental fluvial and aeolian, to marine gravity flow deposits from sub-wave base environments.In this paper stratigraphic context of the producing horizons in the UK Continental Shelf (UKCS), principally the North Sea, is reviewed, and the sedimentation of the reservoir strata placed in an outline geological history. The main producing horizons are described in summary. Matters of stratigraphic terminology and correlation both between fields and between basins are discussed.A lithostratigraphy for the UK southern North Sea was established by Rhys (1974), and for the central and northern North Sea by Deegan & Scull (1977). Although these schemes have proved to be fairly robust, in the last 13 years the acquisition of new data plus a proliferation of new terms not fully documented in the public domain, argue strongly for a comprehensive revision and rationalization which is beyond the scope of this paper. Attempts in the public domain to standardize nomenclature across international boundaries in the North Sea, pursued by Deegan & Scull (1977) for the UK and Norwegian sectors, have lapsed for the most part in subsequent years.Economic basement in the UK North Sea can be regarded at present

‘I can't put that on paper.’ How medical professional values shape the content of death certificates

2016 ◽  
Vol 12 (2) ◽  
pp. 178-194 ◽  
Author(s):  
Myles Leslie
Keyword(s):  
Quality Of Care ◽  
Public Domain ◽  
Medical Professional ◽  
Professional Values ◽  
Death Certificates ◽  
Access To Information ◽  
The Public ◽  
Central Value ◽  
Chief Coroner

AbstractThis paper follows collegiality, demonstrating how, as a central value of medically trained coroners, it can shape the content of death investigations and certificates. Drawing on ethnographic evidence from a 16-month-long study of the Office of the Chief Coroner (OCC) of Ontario, Canada, I argue that collegiality is an instrument of trust that both affords investigators tremendous access to information, and severely limits the flow of that information into the public domain that the OCC serves. The paper focuses on in-care death investigations, which are those where the OCC's medically qualified coroners find themselves investigating the quality of care delivered by professional colleagues. I show how professional expertise, experience and collegial values often combine to see instances of poor or even incompetent care dealt with privately (rather than publicly) or referred up the medical (rather than public safety) hierarchy. The burden of my argument is that collegial deference to the autonomy and skills of other physicians tends to see coroners expurgate the death certificates they produce. These expurgations obscure competence issues from public view and reduce the accuracy of the certificates. I close with a discussion of the benefits and drawbacks of medically qualified death investigators, as well as potential adjustments to improve the accuracy of in-care death investigations and certifications.

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