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Category Archives: Intellectual Property

All Copyrighted Works First Published In the US In 1923 Will Enter Public Domain On January 1st

Smithsonian.com: “A beloved Robert Frost poem is among the many creations that are (finally) losing their protections in 2019… “A beloved Robert Frost poem is among the many creations that are (finally) losing their protections in 2019”. “Whose woods these are, I think I”—whoa! We can’t quote any more of Robert Frost’s “Stopping by Woods… Continue Reading

SciHub continues to get attacked around the world

Motherboard – ‘The Pirate Bay of Science’ Continues to Get Attacked Around the World: “A scientific research depository intended to provide open access to scientific data has had its domains blocked in Russia, after a Russian court declared that the website violates publisher copyrights. It’s the latest salvo in a global war on efforts to… Continue Reading

Potential Changes to UC’s Relationship with Elsevier in January 2019

An Open Letter to the Academic Community – from MacKenzie Smith, University Librarian and Vice Provost of Digital Scholarship, November 28, 2018. “The University of California is renegotiating its systemwide licenses with some of the world’s largest scholarly journal publishers, including industry giant Elsevier. These negotiations may create significant changes in our access to new… Continue Reading

Legal Research Companies Post Laws Online, but Do They Own the Data?

Legal Tech News – Experts note that laws and regulations, for the most part, aren’t copyrightable and that the prohibition is geared toward continuing easy access of laws for citizens “As more private companies upload judicial opinions, state and federal regulations and other public court documents, attempting to copyright those documents may prove futile. After… Continue Reading

The Music of the Algorithms: Tune-ing Up Creativity with Artificial Intelligence

New on LLRX – The Music of the Algorithms: Tune-ing Up Creativity with Artificial Intelligence – In this article, Alan Rothman engages us with significant insights into how the music business is using artificially intelligent music composers, producers and performers that challenge the boundaries of intellectual property and human versus AI musical production. Rothman offers… Continue Reading

Commentary – End intellectual property

End intellectual property – Copyrights, patents and trademarks are all important, but the term ‘intellectual property’ is nonsensical and pernicious “There are four areas of US federal law linked under the rubric of ‘intellectual property’ that we ought to keep separate in our minds. In an essay published in The Politics of Law (2010), Keith Aoki… Continue Reading

Will Blockchain Revolutionize Scholarly Journal Publishing?

The Chronicle of Higher Education: “Since the 1990s, some academic netizens have predicted that open access will upend scholarly journal publishing, yet an oligopoly still dominates the $25-billion industry. Orvium, a European start-up, recently joined those taking on the giant players. It offers a publishing and business plan based on blockchain — a coding structure… Continue Reading

WIPO Lex provides free of charge access to legal information on intellectual property

“WIPO Lex is a global database that provides free of charge access to legal information on intellectual property (IP) such as treaties administered by WIPO, other IP-related treaties, and laws and regulations of some 200 countries. WIPO Lex aims to achieve the objective set forth in Article 4(vi) of the WIPO Convention, that is, WIPO “shall assemble and… Continue Reading

In Groundbreaking Decision, Feds Say Hacking DRM to Fix Your Electronics Is Legal

Motherboard: “The new exemptions are a major win for the right to repair movement and give consumers wide latitude to legally repair the devices they own. The Librarian of Congress and US Copyright Office just proposed new rules that will give consumers and independent repair experts wide latitude to legally hack embedded software on their… Continue Reading

Publishers Escalate Legal Battle Against ResearchGate

Inside Higher Education: American Chemical Society and Elsevier are again suing academic networking site ResearchGate in an attempt to stop it distributing copyrighted research papers. “ResearchGate, a popular for-profit academic social network that makes it easy to find and download research papers, is facing increasing pressure from publishers to change the way it operates. On… Continue Reading

Open Data, Grey Data, and Stewardship: Universities at the Privacy Frontier

Borgman, C. L. (2018). Open Data, Grey Data, and Stewardship: Universities at the Privacy Frontier. Berkeley Technology Law Journal, 33(2), 287–336. “As universities recognize the inherent value in the data they collect and hold, they encounter unforeseen challenges in stewarding those data in ways that balance accountability, transparency, and protection of privacy, academic freedom, and… Continue Reading