IP Conference – free registration

Here’s an interesting looking conference taking place in Helsinki, Finland this October.

ONE RIGHT SYSTEM FOR IP – VISION IMPOSSIBLE?

International Conference

1 – 3 October 2008
Hotel Rantapuisto, Vuosaari, Helsinki

Hosted by IPR University Center and the INNOCENT Graduate School


Globally, the intellectual property (IP) system has become fragmented and complicated. It is contested by the internet generation and many academics for outdated protection schemes. It is contested by developing countries for its imbalance. It is contested by rightholders for providing mainly national protection and weak enforcement mechanisms in a global economy.

The future structure of IP system has been widely debated for years. IPR University Center (University of Helsinki) wants to give a contribution to this important debate by organising a high level academic conference in October 2008.

One Right System For IP – Vision Impossible? is a multidisciplinary conference focusing mainly on legal aspects. It is aimed at European researchers in law, economics and technology, as well as practitioners interested in intellectual property rights.

You can take a look at the programme here. A number of the papers look like they could be very good. In particular, the two taking place late morning on Thursday 2nd could have some relevance for digital curation:

The Changing Purposes of IP Protection: A Basis For Convergence?
Professor Graeme Dinwoodie, Chicago-Kent College of Law

and

Evolving New Markets for IP and its Implications
Dr Ilkka Rahnasto, Vice President, IPR, Nokia Corporation

What’s more - the conference is free of charge!

Quote of the Day

With all the debate and discussion that flows about various legal and illegal forms of copying in the digital age, I like this quote which takes us back to a simpler time.....

"They copied all they could follow, but they couldn't copy my mind, so I left them sweating and stealing a year and a half behind. "

(Rudyard Kipling)

Open Access 101

Looking for an overview of Open Access? I’ve just finished reading this one provided by Peter Suber. Peter Suber is, amongst other things, editor of the very useful Open Access News blog.

Want something even shorter? Check this one out.

Want it in Spanish? Or Slovenian perhaps? He covers that too!

Impact of Copyright Law on Digital Preservation

WIPO (the World Intellectual Property Organisation) has just released an International Study on the Impact of Copyright Law on Digital Preservation. The study focuses on the copyright and related laws of Australia, the Netherlands, the United Kingdom and the United States and the impact of those laws on digital preservation of copyrighted works. It also addresses proposals for legislative reform and efforts to develop non-legislative solutions to the challenges that copyright law presents for digital preservation.

Peter Suber gives a useful summary of the study and comments on it from an open access perspective on his blog. You can take a look at his thoughts here.

Freedom of Information: what relevance to researchers?

An announcement from the Research Information Network (RIN) about a workshop for researchers on the topic of FoI.

"Freedom of Information: what relevance to researchers?

9 September 2008, 10:00 - 16:00

Royal Institute of Public Health, 28 Portland Place, London W1

The Freedom of Information (FoI) Act came fully into force in 2005.
The Act imposes significant duties and responsibilities on public
authorities to give access to information. Together with the Data
Protection Act and the Environmental Information Regulations, FoI is
a significant part of the wider government agenda to increase
openness, transparency, trust and accountability in the public sector.

In this context, the Research Information Network is organizing a
workshop to raise awareness of FoI as a resource discovery tool for
the research community; to help researchers become 'informed
consumers' under the new access regime; and to look at instances
where use of the FoI Act has been beneficial to researchers. Speakers
at the event, to be chaired by Maurice Frankel of the Campaign for
Freedom of Information, will include Professor Duncan Tanner (Bangor
University), Steve Wood (Information Commissioner's Office) and
Teresa Bastow (The National Archives)."

Click here for further information, programme and registration.

Making use of the FoI legislation a resource discovery tool is a topic I have covered in a number of my presentations so I do feel this could be a useful workshop for many.

Opening up about licences

I was at the DCC / Edinburgh e-Science Collaborative Workshop at National eScience Centre last week. Although I was the only speaker from a legal background, legal topics were mentioned by a number of the other speakers. It was evident that increased use of open and more permissive licensing by scientific journals in particular would have a massive positive impact on certain eScience projects.

If you’d like to take a further look, the slides from the day will be available here.

Coincidentally (and with fortuitous timing) the DCC will be publishing a Legal Watch Paper on Creative Commons licences in July so do keep an eye out for this. I will give you a head’s up!

Clearing a Path Through the Copyright Jungle

The British Academy, together with the Publishers Association, have released yesterday a set of Joint Guidelines on Copyright and Academic Research. The announcement was as follows:

"A unique collaboration between two contrasting organisations wanting to cast light on the tangled world of copyright permissions and payments bears fruit today (30 April 2008) with the publication of a set of Joint Guidelines on Copyright and Academic Research.

The collaborators are the Publishers Association, the leading trade organisation serving book, journal, and electronic publishers in the UK, and the British Academy, which speaks nationally for the humanities and social sciences – the discipline areas where copyright issues have caused most confusion.
Designed to clear a path through the complex jungle of copyright legislation, the Joint Guidelines set out to provide practical, objective guidance for the layman and woman, endorsed both from the perspective of the academic researcher and that of the publisher and copyright ‘guardian’.

Authors, publishers and researchers frequently face daily uncertainty as to their respective rights and obligations regarding copyright. The Guidelines address the most frequent problems encountered, including fair dealing exemptions, the terms of protection for different types of materials, widespread confusion over copyright for material held in digital form, and difficult ownership issues, including the troublesome subject of “orphan works”."

You may download or view a copy of the guidelines here.

I have not yet read them yet but I do know that I will be skipping to the section on databases first as IPR in these wonderful creatures is a hot topic for me at the moment. However, with the guidelines being aimed at the humanities and social sciences I fear there will not be enough detail on this important issue to satisfy those involved in eScience.