Here is one of the comic images from the new free, illustrated Open Intellectual Property casebook published by Duke University Press.
More about the book, from Duke’s site:
Open Intellectual Property Casebook
by James Boyle & Jennifer Jenkins
Duke’s Center for the Study of the Public Domain is announcing the publication of Intellectual Property: Law & the Information Society—Cases and Materials by James Boyle and Jennifer Jenkins. This book, the first in a series of Duke Open Coursebooks, is available for free download under a Creative Commons license. It can also be purchased in a glossy paperback print edition for $29.99, $130 cheaper than other intellectual property casebooks.
About the book
This book is an introduction to intellectual property law, the set of private legal rights that allows individuals and corporations to control intangible creations and marks—from logos to novels to drug formulae—and the exceptions and limitations that define those rights. It focuses on the three
main forms of US federal intellectual property—trademark, copyright and patent—but many of the ideas discussed here apply far beyond those legal areas and far beyond the law of the United States.
The book is intended to be a textbook for the basic Intellectual Property class, but because it is an open coursebook, which can be freely edited and customized, it is also suitable for an undergraduate class, or for a business, library studies, communications or other graduate school class. Each chapter contains cases and secondary readings and a set of problems or role-playing exercises involving the material. The problems range from a video of the Napster oral argument to counseling clients about search engines and trademarks, applying the First Amendment to digital rights management and copyright or commenting on the Supreme Court’s new rulings on gene patents.
Intellectual Property: Law & the Information Society is current as of August 2014. It includes discussions of such issues as the Redskins trademark cancelations, the Google Books case and the America Invents Act. Its illustrations range from graphs showing the growth in patent litigation to comic book images about copyright. The best way to get some sense of its coverage is to download it. In coming weeks, we will provide a separate fuller webpage with a table of contents and individual downloadable chapters.
The Center has also published an accompanying supplement of statutory and treaty materials that is available for free download and low cost print purchase.
About the authors
James Boyle is William Neal Reynolds Professor of Law at Duke Law School and the former Chairman of the Board of Creative Commons. His other books include The Public Domain: Enclosing the Commons of the Mind; Shamans, Software and Spleens: Law and the Construction of the Information Society; Cultural Environmentalism (with Lawrence Lessig); and Bound By Law (with Jennifer Jenkins).
Jennifer Jenkins is Senior Lecturing Fellow at Duke Law School and the Director of the Center for the Study of the Public Domain. Her recent articles include In Ambiguous Battle: The Promise (and Pathos) of Public Domain Day and Last Sale? Libraries’ Rights in the Digital Age. She is the co-author, with James Boyle, of Bound By Law and the forthcoming Theft! A History of Music.
