Abstract

The purpose of my dissertation is to develop a new theory of intellectual property , shifting the focus of intellectual property theory from authors to communities, which both use and produce intellectual works. A number of scholars, including James Boyle, Bernard Kaplan, Pamela Samuelson, and Jessica Litman have argued that an author-centered theory of IP rights is both inappropriate for the emerging world of universal digital information and unjust in many of its consequences. My theory recognizes the rights of authors, but does not make them the foundation of IP rights. IP rights are justified by the necessity of maintaining and expanding a shared framework of knowledge . The resulting theory is pluralistic in the sense that users and publishers are assumed to have rights that are not derived from the rights of authors. The value of the intellectual commons itself is not ultimately derived from the rights of authors. My approach also recognizes situations in which IP rules have to be extended or overridden because of other intrinsic values . Developing the theory involves exploring the concept of an original commons as it is developed in the natural-law tradition from Duns Scotus to John Locke. My approach does not base the introduction of IP rights solely on the right's potential economic value. The duration of IP rights needs to take into account the varying pace of technological change, and the overall "ecology" of the intellectual commons. I will show that this theory better addresses the emerging context of universal information than an author-centered theory, and also has implications for "unauthored" forms of knowledge