EDIT WP6

Title: IPR and the web: challenges for taxonomy

Date: Wednesday 20th February 2008

Location: Museum No. 1, Royal Botanical Gardens, Kew. How to get there?
(Please note change of venue)

Areas to be explored

• The distinction between IPR and copyright.
• What is covered by copyright?
• How long does copyright last?
• Finding out who owns copyright.
• What rights are being protected, i.e. what can you do with the information?
• What is the difference between legal systems for data being served to the web?
• Does it make any difference, in terms of copyright, where the work is done?
• Why is the mechanism (using web tools vs traditional synthesis) different in copyright terms?
• What are the risks associated with data management? UK law asserts that breach of copyright is a civil matter and that damage (normally financial) has been suffered by the copyright holder.
• What level of abstraction or atomisation makes the work sufficiently different to be independent of the copyright on the original?
• How can we credit data contributors?
• Can this be a mechanism to lend authority to a data set?
• How do we allow attribution to a dynamic web page?
• How can we encourage openness of data?
• Do we need to protect the rights on our databases?
• Can we manage a “mixed economy”, with different rights being asserted in different areas? What would be the implications for the CDM?

Programme

Meeting arrangements & funding

The morning symposium is open to all. The afternoon workshop sessions will be limited to 12 people per workshop and are now fully booked. Participation in the workshops will basically be first-come-first-served, but we will seek to balance attendance between institutions.

Travel funds for this meeting have already been distributed to partner Institutions as part of the first funding tranche. No further funding is available from EDIT; please consult your EDIT team leader. There is no registration fee.

Speakers

Donat Agosti

Donat Agosti is a science consultant and ant taxonomist. He has been involved in the development of innovative tools to provide open taxonomic data to a wider community (eg antbase.org), providing access to taxonomic publications (plazi.org). His activities include contributions in the technical, legal and social domain, where he is an outspoken advocate for open access. (full CV at http://antbase.org/agosticv_2003.html)

Willi Egloff

Willi Egloff is a lawyer specialised on copyright. He is vice-president of Swissperform (the Swiss collecting society for neighbouring rights) and member of the Federal Arbitration Commission for authors' rights and neighbouring rights. His activities include numerous contributions on copyright issues, amongst them a commentary on Swiss copyright law (see http://www.advocomplex.ch).

Naomi Korn

Naomi Korn is an IP Consultant, based in the UK, with particular interest in digital licensing, rights management and rights exploitation. Naomi works across the cultural heritage sector, Higher and Further Education and other public sector bodies, businesses and professional organisations to develop IP strategies and embed appropriate processes, procedures and policies.
Naomi is currently project managing several projects, including the JISC IPR Consultancy whose aim is to lead on a plan of work that supports JISC and its development programmes in the area of IPR and rights management for Higher and Further education institutions in the UK. She is also leading the Web2Rights project and providing IP consultancy to the the Natural History Museum and EDIT.

Vishwas Chavan

Vishwas Chavan is a scientist from the National Chemical Laboratory in India working in Biodiversity and Ecosystem Informatics. He has been a member of GBIF for several years, participating in the Sub-Committee on Digitization of Biological Collections, chairing the Outreach and Capacity Building sub-Committee and as the point of contact of the Observational Data Task Group. (CV at http://www.ncbi.org.in/cv/vishwas/index.html)