At the Design Council we have just launched a new web site with
resources for business and design.
In particular we have specialist 'knowledge cells' on topics such as
IPR, inclusive design, sustainability...etc.
The IPR information is written by Iain Stansfield who is a specialist
intellectual property solicitor with international law firm Olswang.
www.designcouncil.org.uk/intellectualproperty
Let me know what you think, if it is useful for teaching/research
purposes/practice.
Andrea
Andrea Cooper
Research and Knowledge Manager
Design Council
Direct Line: 0207 4205232
Fax: 0207 4205300
www.designcouncil.org.uk
-----Original Message-----
From: Ken Friedman [mailto:[log in to unmask]]
Sent: 03 July 2003 00:06
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: Intellectual Property Rights -- More Resources
Dear Colleagues,
Following my post on intellectual property rights, Peter Scupelli of
Carnegie Mellon University directed my attention to Lawrence Lessig's
book, The Future of Ideas. The Fate of the Commons in a Connected World.
This book appeared just after I had wrapped up the research on which my
note was based. It looks like an important contribution, and one that I
will plan to read.
Lessig, Lawrence. 2001. The Future of Ideas. The Fate of the Commons in
a Connected World. New York: Random House.
Lawrence Lessig is a pioneer in cyberspace law and the different legal
issues affecting the knowledge economy. Those who wish to know more
about Lessig's many contributions should visit his web site at
URL:
http://lessig.org/
In my recent visit to the site, I learned about the new venture that
Lessig launched together with several colleagues. This is a project
designed to promote shared copyright and open use of intellectual
property under a variety of different plans. This, too, is new since the
article on copyleft mentioned in my note, and it offers an important
series of facilitating mechanisms for such ideas as the shared copyright
and anti-copyright plans created by the Fluxus publishing ventures, or
the more recent GNU licenses and copyleft proposals.
To learn more, visit The Creative Commons at URL:
http://creativecommons.org/
The description posted below is copied from the Creative Commons Web
site.
An interesting note also came from Glenn Johnson noting the importance
of intellectual property rights to leading edge design firms. Over the
years, I have noticed a number of interesting issues in the way that
design practitioners and design educators deal with IP rights. In the
early 1990s, I did some research on these themes. I will look for my
notes and restructure them for a post to PhD-Design.
As mentioned earlier, thoughts on the role of intellectual property
rights in design practice or design research are welcomed - along with
resources I may have missed.
Thanks to Peter Scupelli for the Lessig update.
Best regards,
Ken Friedman
Creative Commons
http://creativecommons.org/
"Creative Commons was founded in 2001 with the generous support of the
Center for the Public Domain. It is led by a Board of Directors that
includes cyberlaw and intellectual property experts James Boyle, Michael
Carroll, Davis Guggenheim, Joi Ito, Molly Shaffer Van Houweling, and
Lawrence Lessig, MIT computer science professor Hal Abelson,
lawyer-turned-documentary filmmaker-turned-cyberlaw expert Eric
Saltzman, and public domain web publisher Eric Eldred.
"Fellows and students at the Berkman Center for Internet & Society at
Harvard Law School helped get the project off the ground. Creative
Commons is now housed at and receives generous support from Stanford Law
School, where Creative Commons shares space, staff, and inspiration with
the Stanford Law School Center for Internet and Society. The Board
oversees a small administrative staff and technical team, and is advised
by a Technical Advisory Board. Creative Commons is sustained by the
contributions of a growing group of supporters.
"Creative Commons's first project, in December 2002, was the release of
a set of copyright licenses free for public use. Taking inspiration in
part from the Free Software Foundation's GNU General Public License (GNU
GPL), Creative Commons has developed a Web application that helps people
dedicate their creative works to the public domain -- or retain their
copyright while licensing them as free for certain uses, on certain
conditions. Unlike the GNU GPL, Creative Commons licenses are not be
designed for software, but rather for other kinds of creative works:
websites, scholarship, music, film, photography, literature, courseware,
etc. We hope to build upon and complement the work of others who have
created public licenses for a variety of creative works.
"Our aim is not only to increase the sum of raw source material online,
but also to make access to that material cheaper and easier. To this
end, we have also developed metadata that can be used to associate
creative works with their public domain or license status in a
machine-readable way. We hope this will enable people to use the our
search application and other online applications to find, for example,
photographs that are free to use provided that the original photographer
is credited, or songs that may be copied, distributed, or sampled with
no restrictions whatsoever. We hope that the ease of use fostered by
machine- readable licenses will further reduce barriers to creativity.
"In 2003, Creative Commons will also work to build an 'intellectual
works conservancy.' Like a land trust or nature preserve, the
conservancy will protect works of special public value from exclusionary
private ownership. We will encourage people to donate their copyrights
to be held in public trust; in some cases, Creative Commons may purchase
important works to help guarantee both their integrity and widespread
availability. Our ultimate goal is to develop a rich repository of
high-quality works in a variety of media, and to promote an ethos of
sharing, public education, and creative interactivity."
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