Best Practices for Managing IP in Citizen Science

Teresa Scassa and Haewon Chung have published a blog post summarizing their two new reports and accompanying brief on the intellectual property issues of citizen science:

Titled Best Practices for Managing Intellectual Property Rights in Citizen Science, this brief is a guide for both citizen science researchers and participants. It covers topics such as the reasons why IP rights should be taken into account in citizen science, the types of rights that are relevant, how they might arise, and how they can be managed. We provide an explanation of licensing, giving specific examples and even parse license terms. The paper concludes with a discussion of best practices for researchers and a checklist for citizen science participants.

You can read the full reports here and here. And you can watch Teressa and Haewon discussing their report on the Commons Lab panel.

Mashups and Remixes: Loosen Up Copyright Law Says Dutch Government

Robert Chesal, Radio Netherlands Worldwide, February 13, 2012

Mashups and remixes could be protected by law. Much to the displeasure of the wider EU, the Dutch want to liberalize their copyright laws to explicitly allow remixes and mashups. The irony is that their inspiration is not political movements like Sweden’s Pirate Party, but America’s laws about fair use.

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The Real SOPA Battle: Innovators vs. Goliath

by James Allworth and Maxwell Wessel, Harvard Business Review, January  18, 2012

… the purpose of this article isn’t to explain what SOPA [Stop Online Piracy Act] and PIPA [Protect IP Act] will do. Instead, it’s about explaining what’s brought them about: SOPA and PIPA are prime examples of big companies trying to do everything they can to stop new competitors from innovating. …

So if “content” vs “technology” doesn’t capture what’s going on in this fight, what does? Well, SOPA makes much more sense if you look at the debate as big companies unwilling to accept change versus the innovative companies and startups that embrace change. And if we accept that startups are created to find new ways to create value for consumers, the debate is actually between the financial interests of “big content” shareholders versus consumer interests at large. …

Check out the full text of this interesting article at The Real SOPA Battle: Innovators vs. Goliath – James Allworth and Maxwell Wessel – Harvard Business Review.

NOTE: If you want to learn more about the history of copyright law and the tug-a-war between big content shareholders and new innovators, check out Jessica Littman’s book Digital Copyright or her many articles on the politics of copyright and copyright reform.

Social Networking Websites – Just How Private Are they?

By: Audrey Millemann and Etan Zaitsu, The IP Law Blog, August 8, 2010

The federal Stored Communications Act (SCA) of 1986 was established in an attempt to give Fourth Amendment-type privacy protections to people for their Internet communications. In other words, Congress sought to protect people’s Internet privacy from warrantless intrusion. As some legal scholars have noted, however, the SCA has not been amended to keep up with the changing dynamics of the Internet. … For example, one development that has raised concerns about the protections afforded by the SCA is the rise of social networking sites …

For full text of the article, visit Social Networking Websites – Just How Private Are they? : IP Law Blog : California Intellectual Property Lawyer, Attorney, Law Firm : Weintraub Genshlea Chediak, Sacramento.

Not a Seed of Doubt: Substantial Extraction of Database

Thanks to Kevin Pomfret for passing this one along.

By Darren Meale, Associate and Anthony Trenton, Partner, SNR Denton UK LLP, LexisNexis, August 31, 2011

In Beechwood House Publishing (t/a Binleys) v Guardian Products Ltd & Anor [2011] EWPCC 22 (20 June 2011), the Patents County Court considered the issue of what amounts to a substantial extraction of data, and therefore an infringement, under the Copyright and Rights in Databases Regulations 1997 (the “Regulations”).

For full text of the legal analysis visit Not a Seed of Doubt: Substantial Extraction of Database.

Open Source Licensing: Risk and Opportunity

By Dr. Ignacio Guerrero, Directions Magazine, July 21, 2011

Summary: This two-part article about open source software looks at software licenses, risks related to intellectual property and governance. In part one, author Ignacio Guerrero, IT consultant and former software director at Intergraph and Rolta, examines software licenses and their impact and risk to intellectual property. Part two will look at the elements of open source governance and risk management, and will be published in mid August.

http://www.directionsmag.com/articles/open-source-licensing-risk-and-opportunity-part-one/190454

Advancing the GEOSS Data Sharing Principles

by Helen Wood, Co-chair, Data Sharing Task Force, GEO News, Issue #15, July 20, 2011

The “GEOSS Data Sharing Action Plan” that was accepted last November by the GEO-VII Plenary and incorporated into the “Beijing Declaration” calls for the creation of the GEOSS Data Collection of Open Resources for Everyone. This emerging GEOSS Data-CORE is a distributed pool of documented datasets with full, open and unrestricted access at no more than the cost of reproduction and distribution. … The GEO Data Sharing Task Force (DSTF) has been tasked to identify the maximum possible datasets that qualify for the Data CORE and whose providers agree to make it available through GEOSS. …

The Task Force conducted a review of legal options for the exchange of data and developed a detailed document addressing legal options for the exchange of data, metadata, and products through the GEOSS Data-CORE.The review noted that the “legal interoperability” of data made available through the GEOSS Data-CORE is essential for the effective sharing of data in GEOSS. Legal interoperability for data means that the legal rights, terms, and conditions of databases provided by two or more sources are compatible and that the data may be combined by any user without compromising the legal rights of any of the data sources used. … The paper identifies an initial set of common-use licenses that meet all of the GEOSS Data-CORE conditions of access and unrestricted re-use of data. …

For full text of the article, visit GEO – Group on Earth Observations | GEO News issue #15 – article.

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Practical guidelines for open data licensing have been published in the United Kingdom

Thanks to Kevin Pomfret for passing along the following link:

by Katleen Janssen, EPSI Platform, 27 May 2011

Naomi Korn and Charles Oppenheim have prepared a Practical Guide for Licensing Open Data, targeting organisations that want to use open data and want to understand under which terms they can use data licensed by third parties. The Guide relies on work done by the Strategic Content Alliance and JISC projects related to digital content, including Web2Rights. The Guide provides short information on some of the most important legal domains that need to be taken into account when licensing open data (intellectual property rights, contract law, data protection, freedom of information, and breach of confidence). It explains the commonly known open licence models…

For full text of the article, click Licensing Open Data: A Practical Guide at EPSI Platform.

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Court Says No, You Can’t Sue Google For Bad Walking Directions

by Greg Sterling, June 17, 2001

Remember the woman in Utah who used Google Maps’ walking directions, was hit by a car and sued? The case is Rosenberg v. Harwood and Google was successful in getting almost all the claims against the company dismissed last week.When last we left our story the plaintiff, Lauren Rosenberg, was walking from 96 Daly Street to and 1710 Prospector Avenue in Park City, Utah. Google Maps sent her via route 224, a highway without sidewalks. She was hit on Route 224 by driver-defendant Patrick Harwood. …

For full text of the article via Court Says No, You Can’t Sue Google For Bad Walking Directions.

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Why OpenStreetMap is moving from Creative Commons to the Open Database License

by Audrey Watters, O’Reilly Radar, June 16, 2011

… When OpenStreetMap launched, contributions to the project were licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution/ShareAlike license. That meant that anyone could copy OSM data, but if it was incorporated into another project, those same terms and conditions applied (ShareAlike) and the copyright owner had to be credited (Attribution). … After much discussion with lawyers and with the community, OpenStreetMap opted to make the move to the Open Database License (ODbL), arguing it was more suited to OSM’s purposes. I recently asked OSM founder Steve Coast about the decision and the process of making the switch. …

Full text of the article via Choosing the right license for open data – O’Reilly Radar.

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