Open Access News

From the charter web site:

The Adelphi Charter on Creativity, Innovation and Intellectual Property responds to one of the most profound challenges of the 21st century: How to ensure that everyone has access to ideas and knowledge, and that intellectual property laws do not become too restrictive. The Charter sets out new principles for copyrights and patents, and calls on governments to apply a new public interest test. It promotes a new, fair, user-friendly and efficient way of handing out intellectual property rights in the 21st century. The Charter has been written by an international group of artists, scientists, lawyers, politicians, economists, academics and business experts.

From the charter text itself:

Creativity and investment should be recognised and rewarded. The purpose of intellectual property law (such as copyright and patents) should be, now as it was in the past, to ensure both the sharing of knowledge and the rewarding of innovation. The expansion in the law’s breadth, scope and term over the last 30 years has resulted in an intellectual property regime which is radically out of line with modern technological, economic and social trends. This threatens the chain of creativity and innovation on which we and future generations depend....[3] The public interest requires a balance between the public domain and private rights. It also requires a balance between the free competition that is essential for economic vitality and the monopoly rights granted by intellectual property laws. [4] Intellectual property protection must not be extended to abstract ideas, facts or data. [5] Patents must not be extended over mathematical models, scientific theories, computer code, methods for teaching, business processes, methods of medical diagnosis, therapy or surgery. [6] Copyright and patents must be limited in time and their terms must not extend beyond what is proportionate and necessary. [7] Government must facilitate a wide range of policies to stimulate access and innovation,including non-proprietary models such as open source software licensing and open access to scientific literature. [8] Intellectual property laws must take account of developing countries’ social and economic circumstances....There must be an automatic presumption against creating new areas of intellectual property protection, extending existing privileges or extending the duration of rights.

For background, see the charter FAQ or James Boyle's column in the October 14 issue of The Guardian, Protecting the public domain, Excerpt from Boyle:

We have forgotten the fundamental truth that Jefferson, and Macaulay understood so well. Property rights are only half of the system. Just as important is the realm of material that is not owned, the public domain, the raw material from which the next invention, novel or song will spring. This debate has been an uneven one over the past few years. The impressive report of the UK Commission on Intellectual Property Rights, which the government seems to have forgotten already, marked a momentary departure from faith-based policy. There have been isolated victories, defensive levees raised here and there against the rising tide of monopoly rents. What has been missing is a positive statement of what good intellectual property policy is. But perhaps things are changing a little. On October 13 in the Great Room of the RSA [Royal Society for the Encouragement of Arts, Manufactures and Commerce], a first stab at answering that question is due to be released. Called the Adelphi charter, it is an attempt to lay out those principles. Central among them are the ideas that policy should be evidence-based and that it should respect the balance between property and the public domain, not eliminate the latter to maximise the former. Full disclosure: I was among those who came up with the idea for the charter even though I can claim scant authorship credit in the text that resulted: the steering committee's members ranged from a Nobel laureate who helped sequence the human genome, to an executive who worked in streaming media. But somehow it seems fitting that the charter will be launched in a room that bears (and bares) eloquent testimony to the fact that these ideas are neither new nor radical.