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Related Link: IU Copyright Management Center
By Susan Voekel
Modern technology has drastically changed the way scholars create and disseminate information and other intellectual properties. It has also changed the ways they use them.
Doubters have only to go into the IU Copyright Management Center's home pages on the World Wide Web (see address at top of story) to get a glimmer of the changes which have occurred in the transfer of knowledge. A touch of the fingertips on the computer keyboard brings an encyclopedic amount of information about copyright from a wide variety of sources. One whirls through cyberspace to other universities, to publications and other information sources. And this is typical of the Web.
Other evidences of the changes are libraries such as those at IU that deliver knowledge to readers in ways hardly envisioned only a few years ago. It both excites and boggles the imagination! The copyright implications are enormous.
These technological advancements pile on top of the fact that the fair use of written materials and intellectual property has long been an aggravating problem.
Scholars both create intellectual property and use that of others, and are thus constantly concerned with their own rights and those of others. The technological changes have emphasized need for more study and more understanding about copyright, patents and trademarks.
"Much of intellectual property may be shaped by federal legislation, but the law shifts many of its benefits, burdens and responsibilities to the state and to state universities," Kenneth Crews wrote in his proposal for a Strategic Directions grant to establish an Institute for the Study of Intellectual Property and Education.
He got the grant.
Crews, associate professor of law and of library and information science at IUPUI, is also director of the Copyright Management Center.
The new institute he is establishing will "foster a more constructive relationship to our legal environment in order to advance our opportunities for teaching, research and service."
Crews has two major objectives in using his two-year grant: (1) to more thoroughly and systematically examine the practices and policies and needs inside the university and (2) to establish IU as a leader in this field.
To meet the first he is conducting a survey of IU campuses "to identify intellectual property needs and to assist with the development of policies and practices, as needed." He is also investigating intellectual property issues "to identify opportunities under the law for best serving university objectives." He hopes there will soon be a copyright liaison working with all the IU campuses to establish a network.
The outreach effort includes developing a Cyberspace Law Speaker Series, which will bring experts to IU, and disseminating information about the subject outside the university.