Subjects:

Intellectual Property Law

Contents:

Part I –

The intellectual property market and the rise of the knowledge industry

intellectual property and the arrival of the information age

the profit imperative and the inner dynamics of the capitalist market economy

the intellectual property trade and its implications for the knowledge industry.

Part II –

Intellectual Property, the Knowledge Industry and the work of Information Professionals

the alienation and marketisation of intellectual property and the rise of the capitalist commodity market regime

the commodification of intellectual property and the process of knowledge production, exchange and dissemination

Intellectual Property and the imperatives of perpetual technological and organisational change.

Part III The changing role of information professionals in the information age

designing strategies and managing information in the age of digitalisation

globalisation and the trade in intellectual property and information

reclaiming their autonomy: information professionals resolving the intellectual property crisis.

This is a highly relevant and accessible book designed to introduce readers to a 'big picture' account of the dynamics associated with the establishment of the new information and knowledge-based economy. The author demonstrates that at the core of these dynamics is the contentious issue of the corporate ownership of intellectual property and the impact that the ownership is having, and increasingly likely to have, not only on the work of information professionals in particular and knowledge workers in general but also on the public at large. She argues that if business and commercial interests are free to appropriate, to exercise monopolistic control and to exploit the generation, exchange, dissemination, storage and retrieval of knowledge and information for the limited purposes of private profit, this is likely to put at risk the freedom of inquiry, the free flow and exchange of ideas, and unimpeded public access to knowledge and information on which scientific research and technological innovation depend