Open Approaches to Sharing: Registered and Unregistered Rights

Abstract

Open licensing has become a very important legal subject in the last decade, with topics such as open data, open access, and open source software gaining mainstream recognition outside intellectual property circles. Most of these topics have one thing in common, they protect only copyright works, which leaves open the question of what licences (if any) are available to protect registrable rights such as patents and trade marks. This chapter explores the recent history of open licensing schemes from the perspective of registered and unregistered rights, concluding that in the future the basis for allowing re-use and re-share of works will be less of an issue of licensing, and more about business models.

Keywords: open access, open science, open source, creative commons

JEL Classification: K00