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This background paper was presented to the National Academy of Sciences in September 2002 for the U.S. National Research Council's Symposium on the Role of Scientific and Technical Data and Information in the Public Domain. The paper examines the role scientific and technical data and information in public-private partnerships. Mr. Maurer discusses the theory of public domain, the roles of scientists, technology transfer offices, universities, governments and corporations and their respective transactions in public domain issues. He also discusses the problems and choices regarding over-patenting, restrictive licenses, moral risk, and leadership. Mr. Maurer concludes by saying that it is still not clear whether universities need to own intellectual property rights in order to transfer technology effectively and that the current system encourages universities to: (a) use exclusive licenses where they are not needed to transfer knowledge,; (b) use non-exclusive licenses where the public interest would be better served by placing discoveries in the public domain; and (c) over-rely on “running royalties.”
The Royal Society makes recommendations to the British government in matters of science. This Report discusses intellectual property rights (IPRs) as they pertain to patents, copyright, and databases. The Society makes several recommendations aimed at keeping science open, one of which, encourages scientists and funders to keep their data accssible to others by allowing free or cheap access to the data. While the report indicates that IPRs can stimulate innovation in research, they also cause tension between private profit and public good and can hinder the free exchange of ideas and information. A complete list of recommendations and actions is included in the report.
As part of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act of 1998, Congress required that the Register of Copyrights report back to Congress on the impact of the legislation on distance education. This report follows a series of hearings conducted with numerous stakeholder groups including libraries, publishers, database producers, and users. It analyzes the current distance learning environment, what it might be like in the future, and makes recommendations concerning possible legislative changes needed to both ensure the rights of copyright holders and the needs for distance learning.
The Digital Millennium Copyright Act of 1998, passed in October 1998 extends copyright to digital objects. It also prohibits the manufacture, distribution and use of technologies that can circumvent access limitations imposed by copyright owners. It also prohibits the removal of copyright information from the digital object.
The basics of the European Directive on Database Protection and the impact it is likely to have on this issue in other countries and in the WIPO negotiations is discussed.
A position paper developed by scientists involved in the use and exchange of data, this paper describes the history of the current database protection legislation, the reactions of various stakeholders, and describes in detail the impacts on and concerns of the scientific data community internationally. There is particular emphasis on the issues for developing countries.
This site links to segments of Web pages for twenty-five information related private and not-for-profit organizations. The links connect to documents on information issues, standards, and policy both within and external to the organization. A final section links to Web sites on U.S. laws and statutes related to information issues.
ICSU is a non-governmental organization, founded in 1931 to bring together natural scientists in international scientific endeavor. The Council acts as a focus for the exchange of ideas and information and the development of standards. This site links to the conference program, committees, and summaries of invited papers for this joint conference with UNESCO. The 13 invited papers cover topics on standards, archiving, electronic publishing in developing countries, digital libraries, S&T information, copyright, data security, and economics of information.
The DLF operates under the Council on Library and Information Resources for the purpose of creating, maintaining, expanding and preserving distributed collections of digital materials. The site contains information about the Federation including DLF presentations and publications and links to Web resources on digital libraries.
WIPO is a United Nations specialized agency responsible for promoting protection of intellectual property throughout the world and for administration of multilateral treaties on legal and administrative aspects of intellectual property. The International Bureau is the secretariat of the WIPO and associations of States created by the Paris Convention, Berne Convention, Madrid Protocol, Lisbon Agreement, Hague Agreement, Strasbourg Agreement, Nice Agreement, Locarno Agreement, Vienna Agreement, Budapest Treaty and other special agreements. This extensive Web site provides access to information on WIPO committees, projects, reports, standards, statistics, legal resources, treaties, international registration marks, international industrial designs, meetings, conferences, and other links. This appears to be the definitive Web resource on international policy, standards, and law related to intellectual property including copyright and registered marks and designs.
COOL is a full-text library of materials on conservation of library, archives, and museum materials. The site provides access by topic, author, professional, and organization. Links are included to electronic journals, Listserv archives, vendors and other links on conservation of materials. Among the alphabetical list of topics are copyright and intellectual property, digital imaging, and ethics.
The INFO2000 Programme of the European Union is sponsoring a project called VERDI (Very Extensive Rights Data Information). The project will facilitate multimedia rights trading by creating a European-wide rights information and licensing network. This is particularly of interest for multimedia producers. The network is described, along with the protocols and standards being discussed and piloted.
Provides summaries of H.R. 354, Collections of Information Antipiracy Act, and H.R. 1858, Consumer and Investor Access to Information Act. Comparisons are made with legislation that did not pass in previous sessions of Congress.
The CNI organization is described. There are over 200 institutional members, predominantly higher education institutions. All are concerned about the impact of networking on education. Four major areas of effort: general advocacy about networked information, content and organization on the Internet, organization and professional issues, including strategies and best practices, and standards and infrastructure. Specific projects in these areas are described. Of particular interest is distance learning/education.
Dr. Kahin is involved in areas of competition and private sector/government interaction. Under these board issues, he is addressing issues of domain names and network numbers, metadata (labeling) for Internet sites, and copyright and intellectual property (database protection and digital copyright). These areas of interest are briefly discussed.
Minutes from presentations by experts representing the major stakeholder groups related to database protection are presented. The presenters include Michael Keplinger, U.S. Patent and Trademark Office and head of the delegation to the WIPO negotiations; Peter Weiss, Office of Management and Budget; Lou Brown, National Science Foundation; Prue Adler, Association of Research Libraries, and Paul Uhlir, National Research Council. Notes of a panel discussion are also included.
Dr. Nelson identified four major issues and policy areas in which he is working. Vision includes the education of the public to new technologies and their benefits. Research and Technology includes making technologies more reliable, more robust and more usable. In the area of Information Policy, the major efforts include intellectual property and copyright in the digital environment and telecommunications. In the area of security, the Critical Infrastructure Protection Commission was recently established. Additional discussion between Dr. Nelson and the CENDI members included a discussion of information life cycle management and preservation and archiving. Changing scientific communication practices, the CIO Council, electronic Freedom of Information Act compliance, and intellectual property and copyright.
This document collects papers from this conference which cover a wide range of topics including encryption, intellectual property related metadata for rights management, secure servers, copyright management systems, etc.
Digest of the Report. Full report is available for purchase. The issues related to copyright in the digital environment are reviewed. The group proposes technologies, policies, and education in copyright as better means to control theft of digital materials than legislation. The group cautions that legislatures should move slowly since the environment is still so new and so volatile.
In response to a request from several federal science agencies, the NRC undertook a study to review the issues surrounding private rights and public access and interest to scientific and technical databases. The group reviewed the creation, production and dissemination of these databases from the government, commercial and not-for-profit sectors. A variety of examples within the sciences were reviewed. The report takes a specific look at the pending Database Protection legislation at that time, and the European Database Directive with these issues in mind.
This article discusses intellectural property conservancies (IPCs) as a way to provide public benefits by making digital content donated, or licensed to them, freely available and ensuring its long-term preservation. The author explores the challenges associated with creating a digital conservancy. These include obtaining funding, usable digital assets, metadata issues, providing worldwide access and providing perpetual access.
This tutorial from The University of Leicester provides users with all the necessary steps for locating electronic journals in the Library. The aim of the tutorial is to help users understand the different types of journals, how to locate an electronic journal; understand electronic journal suppliers; know which passwords are required; understand the issues of access on and off campus; understand copyright restrictions; and know where and how to set up current awareness alerts.
This report provides a summary of the proceedings from the 1999 FLICC Forum on Federal Information Policies (March 10, 1999). Some of the topics covered include Web publishing, agency policy on copyright, and using technology to manage copyrighted resources.
This report is the result of an intensive study of the copyright issues involved in digital distance education. The report is divided into 6 parts plus 9 appendices. The report gives: an overview of the nature of distance education, describes current licensing practices, describes the status of technologies involved in the delivery and protection of distance education materials, analyzes the application of current copyright law to digital distance education activities, discusses prior initiatives addressing copyright and digital distance education, and examines the question of whether the law should be changed,
These are the laws and amendments which comprise U.S. Copyright law.
This Circular presents a brief overview of the meaning of copyright, who can claim copyright, what works are protected, what is not protected, how to secure a copyright, fees, registration and procedures, and other information required for pursuing copyright protection in the U.S.
Guide to libraries on negotiating license agreements for access to electronic resources. Identifies issues of libraries and user communities for consideration by licensors. New cost models and legal agreements are required to address issues in acquiring and making available to the user community electronic products. This document provides background of legal issues, fifteen principles of licensing, terms to be defined in the legal document, and bibliographies on licensing and other related sources.
The website provides guidance on copyright issues for government managers and STI information center staff. The guide covers copyright issues if the document is authored by Government employees, a joint work of Government and non-Government authors, produced by work done under Government contract, the result of work done under a federally-funded grant, or received under an agreement, partnership or exchange.
Mr. Watson reports on a presentation by Adam Eisgrau at OCLC's Distinguished Seminar on January 19, 1999. Mr. Eisgrau discussed the freedom of access wars now in progress. He provided a brief background into copyright law and stated that its purpose was to ensure that the public benefited from progress in science and the useful arts. The copyright law has a fair use doctrine and a first sale doctrine which have been under fire. Mr. Eisgrau also talked about the new Digital Millennium Copyright Act of 1998 which granted new rights of control of access to holders of copyright holders. The Act also changed the time limits associated with copyright protection. In addition to the ongoing copyright laws, the Uniform Commercial Code has recommended a change to the code that would ratify shrink-wrap licensing.
This Brief discusses the relationship between patents and cooperative R&D in the context of intellectual property policies and Congressional efforts to encourage collaborative ventures. The legislature's keen interest in augmenting research in the industrial community is reflected in both the Executive and Legislative branches' encouragement of companies who undertake cooperative R&D arrangements and who expand the opportunities available for research. Congress has also become increasingly interested in the value of intellectural property since technology development has become a significant factor in the U.S. economy. This paper also discusses the complementary roles that academia, industry, and government can play in technology development, especially in the area of cooperative R&D.
This Brief summarizes the legislative proposals and reviews the pros and cons for the protection of noncreative databases. Noncreative databases are those that are based on industrious effort rather than on creativity. The proponents of database protection argue that such protection will enourage the creation and maintenance of databases; remove the gap in protection caused by court decisions and technological development; and facilitate competition with European database producers who are protected by a new database extraction right. U.S. database producers can benefit from the EU Database Directive only if they have a substantial economic presence in an EU member country or if the U.S. enacts reciprocal database legislation. Opponents against database protection argue that such protection will have a negative impact on science and basic research, will increase access costs, and that these proposals are anti-competitive and overbroad.
The author describes four initiatives that assist in understanding Digital Rights Management (DRM) in the emerging eBook environment: the Electronic Book Exchange Working Group (EBX); the Open eBook Forum (OeBF); Digital Object Identifiers for eBooks (DOI-EB); and the eBook Standards of the Association of American Publishers (AAP) which is comprised of three separate reports (DRM for eBooks, Numbering Standards for eBooks, and Metadata Standards for eBooks). Each initiative is discussed at length. The AAP report is also discussed extensively.
The author presents several architectural principles for the deployment of networked information. These principles are: (1)Provide globally unique, persistent identifers for each information object; (2) View information objects as true digitial objects and make them self-describing; (3)Use wrappers such as XML to logically represent information resources; (4) Descriptive, technical and rights management information should be referenced in the metadata package; (5) Use wrappers to declare the availability of multiple content options; and (6) Use wrappers to allow for the repository, authentication and authorization services to be independently referenced. These prinicipals will make the discovery, retrieval and use of digital objects easier and also consistent with intellectual property rights (IPR).
The author provides an in-depth discussion of the scope of control that digital rights management (DRM) can assert over intellectural property assets. The role of fair use and the activities that rely on fair use are explained. He also revisits the purpose of copyright law, indicating that it represents a bargain between the public and copyright owners. The author concludes that DRM threatens to undermine fair use in its efforts to control infringement.
This German and English web site is focused on intellectual property issues facing museums, archives, and libraries. The site is part of the Virtual Library of Museums (and History) in Germany and includes many international resource links.
Finland's new copyright legislation bans all imports of pirate copies from abroad, however, it does allow copying of DVDs for home use. There is a copyright fee that is placed on all empty cassettes, video tapes, or CDs in Finland that compensates for the provision of copying for home use. The new law continues to provide copyright protection to journalist and photographers rather than their employers.
UNESCO is proposing to study the use of limitations and exceptions to copyright in the digitial environment. This report summarizes the International Federation of Library Assocations and Institutions (IFLA) stance on copyright in the digital environment. IFLA's primary concern is that licensing and technological protection is distorting the balance between commercial interests and information users. IFLA believes that intellectual property laws must be balanced with effective limitations and exceptions.
The National Academies Intellectual Property website serves as a focal point for locating the Academies' extensive work on this topic and as a forum to discuss ongoing efforts. Links to publications on patents, sharing data, antitrust, copyright, database protection and other topics are available on the site. The audio transcript and presentation slides from the May 19-20 symposium on electronic scientific, technical and medical journal publishing and its implications are available on the site.
This report provides a summary of the points raised at the "Scholarship and Libraries in Transition: A Dialogue about the Impacts of Mass Digitization Projects." In particular it addresses concerns generated by Google's mass digitization project.
This report outlines the NISO's discussion of Digital Rights, notably issues of reproduction and library usage.
This report identifies and proposes strategies for addressing the Intellectual Property concerns of preparing digital libraries.
This report outlines the governments plans to address the copyright legality of oprhaned works.
This website covers the activities and findings of the section 108 study group for the Library of Congress. Their goal is to propose changes that willl both respect copyright and allow access in respones to digitization.
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