Abstract

Review of trends in copyright and author rights. The Web has helped to highlight the differences between the Anglo-Saxon (common law) and Latin (civil law) worlds, and at the same time has spurred movement worldwide toward more homogeneous policies between countries. The progress is described.

Abstract

We analyse different alternatives that facilitate the exploitation of intellectual property. Specifically, we deal with author’s rights. First we provide a general overview of the intellectual property concept and then we describe the rights management alternatives, including collective management and self management. Next, we analyse a selected set of  initiatives that enable users to self manage their intellectual property rights, by partially transferring them or by obtaining economic benefits in exchange. We finally propose the main features for a comprehensive intellectual property system and present the results and prototypes that our research group has obtained and developed.