INTELLECTUAL PROPERTY: Who Should Own Scientific Papers?

Abstract

Electronic communication has provided a new level of challenges and concerns in the area of protecting the rights of authors, producers, and publishers. Recently, the World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO) began the process of updating the international copyright system to cope with today’s digital environment, but postponed discussion of a treaty that would have affected databases. Jukka Liedes, who drafted the treaty proposals, discusses the issues relevant to the scientific community in the treaties that were concluded and the issues that will need to be faced in considering protection of databases.