Intellectual Property: Fair Dealing and Public Interest

Fair use is a limitation and exception to the exclusive right granted by copyright law to the author of a creative work. ‘Fair Use’ allows limited use of copyrighted material without the need to get permission from the copyright holders. It makes provision for the legal, unlicensed citation or inclusion of copyrighted materials in another author’s work.  There are numerous examples of fair use in intellectual property including criticism, review, commentary, search engines, parody, journalism, research, teaching, archiving and scholarship.

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Invisible Colleges: Owning Our Common Intellectual Heritage

Invisible Colleges are a significant part of our common intellectual heritage, a social behaviour which extends into the distant past.. The 17th century holds an important history in the development of thought.  It saw people like Francis Bacon and Rene Descartes formulate questioning ways of thinking in our world, encouraging and establishing cultures of exploring the world in which we live, and cultivating a personal relationship with the knowledge of the universe. Read more…