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School of Law

Creativeworks London IP Event: Design Workshop

23 January 2015

Time: 3:30 - 6:00pm
Venue: Seminar Room A, Research Department, Victoria and Albert Museum, Cromwell Road, London SW7 2RL

Creativeworks London is hosting series of workshops which are investigating IP sharing and exploitation in the creative industries. 

This workshop seeks to explore new ways of sharing and exploiting intellectual property in the design sector, outside the boundaries of Open Source and Creative Commons licensing. Because of the nature of the workshop, places are limited to keep the number of working members to a manageable size, and these will be allocated on a first comer basis.

The workshop will be run by Professor Chris Reed, Professor of Electronic Commerce Law at the Centre for Commercial Law Studies, Queen Mary University of London. It is part of the Creativeworks London Digital Economy Research Cluster and is one of an ongoing series of Creativeworks London's Research Labs.

The theory the workshop will explore is that the design community is regularly producing intellectual property which it might be happy for others to use if a fair return can be achieved, but which cannot be easily be exploited under existing legal mechanisms.

The aims are:

  • To identify the ways in which the design community might want to share IP, and the kinds of non-traditional return which would be acceptable. For example, an IP owner might be unable to share its IP because it cannot currently be valued, but would want a fair share of the profits (if any) made by using that IP. Can we identify principles and mechanisms for sharing and remunerating which would be acceptable to the community? I would also like to look at concepts like IP swapping, remuneration in the form of attribution, etc. These are the things we hope to discover from the attendees, as inputs to my project.
  • To devise ways in which the community's collective view on non-traditional exploitation might be implemented in spite of the barriers which existing IP laws present. We envisage some forms of collective agreement, using contract as the legal mechanism, and with governance systems which can capture the community's understanding of fairness and deal with uncertainty, such as future valuation. The lawyers involved in the workshop will help provide input here. The results will be the output given back to the attendees.

The workshop format will be a small number of short presentations to open proceedings and get people thinking, followed by open discussion under Chatham House rules (participants may be quoted, but will not be identified as the source unless they agree subsequently). Notes will be taken, and there will be an audio recording which will remain confidential. The project has research ethics approval to assure these matters.

Later in the year there will be further workshops for the fashion and digital music sectors. A White Paper will be produced in January next year, which will be sent to all participants, and an academic article will follow by February.

About Creativeworks London

Creativeworks London is one of four Knowledge Exchange Hubs for the Creative Economy funded by the Arts and Humanities Research Council (AHRC) to develop strategic partnerships with creative businesses and cultural organisations, to strengthen and diversify their collaborative research activities and increase the number of arts and humanities researchers actively engaged in research-based knowledge exchange.

How to Book

Participation is free of charge, but prior registration is required via Eventbrite.

Contact

For more information, please contact the CCLS Events Team on ccls-events@qmul.ac.uk.


Photography, video and audio recording

Please note that CCLS events may be photographed or video and audio recorded. These materials will be used for internal and external promotional purposes only by Queen Mary University of London. If you object to appearing in the photographs, please let our photographer know on the day. Alternatively you can email the CCLS Events Team on ccls-events@qmul.ac.uk in advance of the event that you are attending.

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