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The Role of Scientific and Technical Data and Information in the Public Domain Proceedings of a Symposium (2003) / Chapter Skim
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2. The Genius of Intellectual Property and the Need for the Public Domain
Pages 10-14

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From page 10...
... But the real genius of intellectual property is that it tries to do something that my colleague Jerry Reichman calls "making markets": that is, it tries to make markets where markets would otherwise be impossible. For many of you, making markets might seem a cold and unattractive phrase.
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From page 11...
... It is hard for us to engage in the basic kinds of acts that make up the essence of academia or of the sciences without at least potentially triggering intellectual property liability. It is in fact the paradox of the contemporary period that at the moment when the idea of every person with his or her own printing press becomes a reality, so does his or her own copyright police; and for every person's digital lab, the potential of a patent police nearby.
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From page 12...
... The intellectual property system we have inherited had a strategy of braiding a thin layer of intellectual property rights around a public domain of ideas and facts, which could never be owned. But one could own the expression or the invention made out of those ideas and facts, leaving the ideas above and facts below in the public domain for the next generation to build on.
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From page 13...
... The reason that we cannot do that is because there is an urgency to the task, which is going to require speed greater than that produced by the occasionally glacial process of convincing Congress or other bodies, including private bodies, that they have taken a wrong step. The urgency of our task is underscored by a number of developments accompanying the recent expansions in intellectual property.
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From page 14...
... I do not think one can assume that scientists will automatically continue to have the same kind of skepticism that they currently express toward intellectual property expansions like those enacted in the European Directive on the Legal Protection of Databases and in recently proposed database protection legislation in the United States. A second development is that the universities and the science establishment, traditionally the "public defenders for the public domain," are changing.
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Key Terms

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  • copyright unless

  • expanding intellectual
  • empirical evidence
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  • unique image
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  • salient market
  • patent funding
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