New: Hijacking Shared Heritage: Cultural Artifacts and Intellectual Property Rights

Zacharias Legal Document Collection - 1559 Title DeedAuthors: Amy Hackney Blackwell & Christopher William Blackwell

Abstract: Recent years have seen an increase in claims of intellectual property rights to all sorts of objects that were formerly considered the common property of all. Institutions, individuals, and nations that possess works of art, historic documents, or naturally occurring biological materials have claimed ownership of intellectual property related to those objects, such as images of those objects. These claims are ostensibly necessary to protect the owners’ rights to profit from the use of these objects. They in fact prevent others from using the objects to their fullest potential. In the case of images or objects that have very little economic value but ample scientific and scholarly value, this obstruction is actually detrimental to the progress of art and science, and therefore antithetical to the purpose of copyright and other forms of intellectual property.

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