San Francisco, CA, USA; Berlin, GERMANY; and Lisbon, Portugal — December 13, 2006 — Creative Commons, a nonprofit dedicated to building a body of creative work free to share and build upon, is proud to announce the celebration of the launch of its licenses in Portugal on December 15, 2006.

Creative Commons copyright licenses are available free of charge from the group’s website. The licenses allow authors and artists to mark their works as free to copy or transform under certain conditions—to declare “some rights reserved,” in contrast to the traditional “all rights reserved”—thereby enabling others to access a growing pool of raw materials without legal friction.

Staff at Creative Commons’ offices in San Francisco and Berlin worked with the project leads Pedro Oliveira, José Rui Felizardo and Pedro Ferreira in Portugal to adapt the standardized licenses to Portuguese law. The team has also been supported by Filipa Salazar Leite from the law firm Simmons & Simmons in Lisbon. Creative Commons Portugal was hosted by FCEE-Universidade Católica, INTELI – Intelligence in Innovation and UMIC – Knowledge Society Agency.

With the availability of the Creative Commons licenses in Portugal, one of the largest and most prestigious daily newspapers in Portugal, Público, released articles under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 2.5 license, both online and in the paper edition.

The launch of the licenses will be celebrated by a series of events including a conference on ‘The Future of Intellectual Property’ to be held on Dec 15th 2006 at FCEE-Católica in Lisbon. Professor Lawrence Lessig, CEO & Chairman of Creative Commons, will be the keynote speaker.

About FCEE-Católica – School of Economics and Management, Universidade Católica Portuguesa

The School of Economics and Management of the Universidade Católica Portuguesa (FCEE-Católica) is a leading Management and Economics school in Portugal. The school offers undergraduate, graduate and executive programs in business and economics. FCEE-Católica faculty members are also deeply involved in research activities. For more information, visit their website.

About INTELI – Intelligence in Innovation

INTELI is a private non-profit think tank that promotes intelligence in innovation in areas such as technology and innovation management for the automotive, aerospatiale, energy, biotechnology, regional development and “creative industries”. The Innovation Centre has been supporting public policies and developing strategic consultancy to Ministries, public institutes, R&D institutions and companies. INTELI is actively involved in several national and EU projects aimed at developing “creative cities” or “intelligent cities” across European countries in co-operation with an international network of innovation organisations. For more information, please visit their website.

About UMIC – Knowledge Society Agency, Ministry for Science, Technology and Higher Education

UMIC, Knowledge Society Agency, acts under the tutelage of the Ministry for Science, Technology and Higher Education and oversees all aspects related to the development of the information and knowledge society in Portugal. Major projects related to the inclusive dissemination of information and knowledge include connecting all schools with broadband, managing online repositories of information and knowledge for education and research, deploying wireless networks in all the campus of higher education institutions in Portugal and the installation of hundreds of free-of-charge public-accessible hotspots countrywide for the dissemination of ICTs and training. For more information, visit their website.

About Creative Commons

Creative Commons is a not-for-profit organization, founded in 2001, that promotes the creative re-use of intellectual and artistic works—whether owned or in the public domain. Creative Commons licenses provide a flexible range of protections and freedoms for authors, artists, and educators that build upon the “all rights reserved” concept of traditional copyright to offer a voluntary “some rights reserved” approach. It is sustained by the generous support of various organizations including the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation, Omidyar Network, the Hewlett Foundation, and the Rockefeller Foundation as well as members of the public. For general information, visit the group’s website.

Contacts

Pedro Oliveira
FCEE-Católica
Email

Pedro Ferreira
UMIC
Email

José Rui Felizardo
INTELI
Email

Christiane Henckel von Donnersmarck
Executive Director Creative Commons International
Creative Commons
Email

Mia Garlick
General Counsel
Creative Commons
Email

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