identification and orphans

This page considers intellectual property rights identification challenges and mechanisms, including debate about responses to 'orphan' copyright works.

It covers -

• introduction
• how many orphans
• copyright registers
• patent, trademark and design registers
• tools
• alerts

     introduction

Because there is no global registration scheme for copyright and metadata-based intellectual property rights management schemes such as DOI have only very limited coverage it is often very difficult to quickly -

• identify who created a text, image or other item of intellectual property
• determine whether that person or organisation is the copyright owner
• identify whether the work is still protected by copyright, for example is the person still alive
• gain permission for use of the work

Information on the status of orphan works in the US features on the Library of Congress site here and in the detailed 2006 US Copyright Office Orphan Works report here. The US Association of Research Libraries maintains a site on orphan works.

We'll shortly be highlighting some resources of value in identifying creators and the copyright status of works.

One example is the WATCH (Writers, Artists & Their Copyright Holders) database, a US-UK project that provides information about English-language literary figures (including some Australians) and their estates.

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