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Deazley, Ronan --- "Copyright’s Public Domain" [2007] ELECD 150; in Waelde, Charlotte; MacQueen, Hector (eds), "Intellectual Property" (Edward Elgar Publishing, 2007)

Book Title: Intellectual Property

Editor(s): Waelde, Charlotte; MacQueen, Hector

Publisher: Edward Elgar Publishing

ISBN (hard cover): 9781845428747

Section: Chapter 2

Section Title: Copyright’s Public Domain

Author(s): Deazley, Ronan

Number of pages: 14

Extract:

2. Copyright's public domain
Ronan Deazley

1 INTRODUCING THE PUBLIC DOMAIN
When we first heard Julie Andrews sing that immortal phrase, `Let's start at the
very beginning, it's a very good place to start', intuitively we knew she was
right, that in almost all endeavours in life, whether reading or singing, swinging
from trees or fashioning play-suits from old curtains, the place to start is indeed
at the beginning. When the particular endeavour at hand is a commentary upon
the concept of the public domain within the context of intellectual property
doctrine, most would agree that the origins of contemporary scholarship upon
the public domain lie with the publication of David Lange's seminal work
`Recognizing the Public Domain' just over a quarter of a century ago.1 And yet
Lange's piece is a curious place to start indeed in that he sparks a debate about
the public domain without making any attempt to articulate what he means by
the public domain.2 Whereas Andrews introduced us to the necessary Do-Re-Mi
with which to navigate the internal workings of the diatonic scale, Lange pro-
vides us with none of the rudimentary concepts and distinctions with which to
build an understanding of the public domain. One observation he does make,
however, is that the public domain `tends to appear amorphous and vague, with


1
Lange, D. (1981), `Recognizing the Public Domain', 44 Law & Contemporary
Problems, 147.
2
Lange is not alone in this regard; ...