Instruments of Public Domain in Modern Information Society

Abstract

Broadening the list of the protected results of intellectual property should not cause the deprivation of the possibility to have an access to a scientific and cultural domain and use it in society. Acquisition by using intellectual property of global nature means the necessity to obtain permission to use the result of intellectual activity in some jurisdictions and probably from different copyright holders. This raises the price of using intellectual property and hence the price of access of society to the existing achievements of the human mind in both cultural and technological areas. To solve these issues, the mechanism of public domain can play a significant role. It is deserves noting that a simple withdrawal of objects from copyright protection may cause new challenges: weaker exclusive rights can cause not only broadening the sphere of free use of works by society but monopolization of the emerging sphere by people supervising databases. The public domain regime allows averting this challenge setting rules and conditions of using third party's results of intellectual activity. At that, this regime may be lucrative to both users and copyright holders which in turn use borrowed results of intellectual activity in the commercial activity including the creation of new objects. The paper features the fundamental functions of public domain. These functions are various and they go beyond the limits of the internal regulation of intellectual property. However, the regime of public domain lacks efficiency in terms of stimulating initiative in innovations and creating new results as the mechanism of exclusive rights works better. Thus, complex regulation of issues of intellectual property taking into account the potential of every available instrument may become the most efficient. In this case, the regime of public domain may be a crucial tool for regulating intellectual property and using information in general.