Intellectual Property Casebook Now Available As A Free Download

from the check-it-out dept

About a month ago I wrote about James Boyle and Jennifer Jenkins of the Center of the Study of the Public Domain at Duke Law School releasing a free download of an Intellectual Property Statutory Supplement (which normally big publishers try to sell for around $50). As noted, this was a kickoff for an even bigger project, an open coursebook in intellectual property. That Open Intellectual Property Casebook is now available. You can download the whole thing for free. If you want a nice printed copy, it'll currently run about $24 on Amazon -- which is about $135 less than other IP case books. The entire book weighs in at nearly 800 pages, so there's a lot in there if you felt like delving into a variety of topics around copyright, trademark and patent law -- including specific efforts by Congress around those laws and the way that the courts have interpreted them.

As mentioned in our last post, Boyle and Jenkins are doing this, in part, because they recognize the insane prices that academic publishers have been getting away with charging for their books:

Partly, we do it because we think the price of legal casebooks and materials is obscene. Law students, who are already facing large debt burdens, are required to buy casebooks that cost $150–$200, and “statutory supplements” that consist mainly of unedited, public domain, Federal statutes for $40 or $50. The total textbook bill for a year can be over $1500. This is not a criticism of casebook authors, but rather of the casebook publishing system. We know well that putting together a casebook is a lot of work and can represent considerable scholarship and pedagogic innovation. We just put together this one and we are proud of it. But we think that the cost is disproportionate and that the benefit flows disproportionately to conventional legal publishers. Some of those costs might have been more justifiable when we did not have mechanisms for free worldwide and almost costless distribution. Some might have been justifiable when we did not have fast, cheap and accurate print on demand services. Now we have both. Legal education is already expensive; we want to play a small part in diminishing the costs of the materials involved.

However, they also note that it's not just about making the books cheaper, but better and more useful:

Our point is not only that the current casebook is vastly too expensive, it is also awkward, inflexible, lacking visual stimulus, incapable of customization and hard to preview and search on the open web. Casebooks do not respond well to the different needs of different professors. Students cannot easily be given free, searchable digital access to all the materials, on all their devices, anywhere, access that does not go away when the course—or the publisher—ends. We can do that.

There are also lots of people outside of law school, or outside this country, who would like to know more about American law—just as there are people outside of computer science who want to know about artificial intelligence. Free is a good price-point for them. Customizable is a good form. This book is merely a beta-test version, but it is an example of what can be done.

In case you're wondering, while the statutory supplement was available on a CC: BY license (requires just attribution), this casebook is under a CC: BY-NC-SA license. The key differences: the former can be resold commercially while the latter has a block on commercial uses. It also has a "share alike" requirement. While I'm a huge fan of Creative Commons, I've been critical of its licenses that include the non-commercial restriction and believe there are strong reasons to remove them, in part because of a perception and branding problem that people have, which potentially do more harm than good to the Creative Commons brand. Many people believe that all CC licenses are "non-commercial" which has actually limited those who wish to use them to encourage commercial use. Separately, the definition of "non-commercial" can be pretty vague (though, to its credit, Creative Commons has worked hard to clarify).

While Boyle and Jenkins are using an NC license with the casebook, I'm happy that they at least put in a note defining their interpretation of commercial use:

Editor’s note: we interpret this to mean “providing the material above cost.” Digital cost is zero. You are free to reproduce the material in paper form and charge a fee to cover copying costs, but nothing more. This applies both to commercial and non commercial entities.

I still think it would have been fine if they'd skipped the "NC" altogether, but it does not appear to be a huge issue here. On the whole this is great news for folks who want to learn more about copyright, patents and trademark law -- whether you're a law student or just an interested bystander...

Filed Under: casebook, copyright, creative commons, education, free, free download, intellectual property casebook, ip casebook, james boyle, jennifer jenkins, law school, patents, trademark

Duke Professors Looking To Make Legal Texts Affordable; Kicking Off With Intellectual Property Law

from the make-it-so dept

James Boyle and Jennifer Jenkins of the Center of the Study of the Public Domain at Duke Law School have recognized what many people have: the academic publishing world is insane. Textbook pricing is generally insane, in part because the people who make the decision (the professors) are not the people doing the buying (the students), meaning that the buyers have little to no choice in what they buy. That enables the publishers to jack up the prices to absolutely insane rates. This even includes legal "casebooks" and "statutory supplements," which are often composed of mostly public domain material (or, legal filings where the person who put together the book had no authorship). So Boyle and Jenkins are working on an open coursebook for intellectual property, which looks like it's going to be fantastic.

To kick it off, however, they've now released an Intellectual Property Statutory Supplement, which basically has the text of various relevant laws and international agreements concerning intellectual property in the United States. A somewhat equivalent book that many law schools use will run you over $50. But the Boyle/Jenkins statutory supplement is free to download, or available for print-on-demand at cost (around $10) for law students who need paper copies and can't bring electronic copies into classrooms. As they note in the announcement about this project:

We are motivated in part by the outrageously steep cost of legal teaching materials, (and the increasing restrictions on those materials — such as the removal of the right of first sale). This book is intended for use with our forthcoming Intellectual Property casebook (coming in the Fall) but can also be used as a free or low cost supplement for basic Intellectual Property courses — at the college, law school or graduate school levels. Whether or not you buy it, the free download will at the very least gives you a statutory reference book for those times when internet access is unavailable, and you just need to scratch that intellectual property research itch. The book is also available at cost of production — about $10.50 — as a handsomely covered paperback. Most of the current Intellectual Property Statutory & Treaty Supplements are $45-$50.

As you may recall, just a few months ago, we wrote about some well-known publishers of legal casebooks trying to undermine first sale rights by requiring students to give back books they bought in exchange for access to a digital copy (which may or may not stay online). It's good to see folks like Boyle and Jenkins step in and recognize that there's more to be gained by sharing knowledge and information, rather than seeking to lock it up. I hope other professors will follow suit.

Oh, and as a bonus, you owe it to yourself to read their posting on Thomas Macaulay's famed 1841 speech about the dangers of copyright maximalism. We've quoted from it at times, and the famous line from it is usually how "the effect of [the copyright] monopoly generally is to make articles scarce, to make them dear, and to make them bad." However, the entire speech is worth reading, and here they highlight a warning against copyright maximalism, in which he notes that it will lead to less respect for the law. Remember, he was saying this in 1841. Fairly prescient, huh?

At present the holder of copyright has the public feeling on his side. Those who invade copyright are regarded as knaves who take the bread out of the mouths of deserving men. Everybody is well pleased to see them restrained by the law, and compelled to refund their ill-gotten gains. No tradesman of good repute will have anything to do with such disgraceful transactions. Pass this law: and that feeling is at an end. Men very different from the present race of piratical booksellers will soon infringe this intolerable monopoly. Great masses of capital will be constantly employed in the violation of the law. Every art will be employed to evade legal pursuit; and the whole nation will be in the plot… Remember too that, when once it ceases to be considered as wrong and discreditable to invade literary property, no person can say where the invasion will stop. The public seldom makes nice distinctions. The wholesome copyright which now exists will share in the disgrace and danger of the new copyright which you are about to create.

Filed Under: academic publishing, casebooks, copyright, creative commons, intellectual property, intellectual property statutory supplement, james boyle, jennifer jenkins, legal case books, patents, public domain, textbooks