Michael Dolan Dot Com

Friday, April 4th, 2008

Rethinking IP

I saw an interesting article over at HBS’ Working Knowledge website. I think Prof. Jim Heskett is definitely asking the right questions and yes, I would agree that the entire world needs to rethink Intellectual Property and how we protect incentives to innovate vs consumption of IP across a Commons. I think the paragraph where Jim discusses brands across a community has very, very close relevance to some of the issues open source communities face. Included in the spectrum are the commercial open source companies that seem to have come to a peaceful state with their own strategy, but personally I think have only muddied the water further within external communities.

Now all we need is an answer to how it can be done ;-)

Or has the culture of “free” become so deeply imbedded in the minds of a new generation of users that content developers can only hope for partial, occasional, or eventual financial rewards for their efforts?

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More generally, are views of ownership of intellectual property changing? If so, how will it affect the way intellectual property is valued for financial purposes? Are laws worldwide regarding intellectual property out of date? What do you think?