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On the occasion of both Earth Day and World Intellectual Property Day, which this year centers on the theme of Innovation for a Green Future, we’d like to underline the importance of cultural heritage preservation as a response to the threats posed by climate change. In this post, we’ll also share some insights on how…
Since the founding of Creative Commons (CC) in 2001, we’ve been supported by like-minded organizations and individuals who value open access, the open community, and the global commons as much as we do. As we near our 20th anniversary, we are reflecting on the past and planning for the future. What better way to do…
The benefits of open access (OA) are undeniable and increasingly evident across all academic disciplines and scientific research: making academic publications1 freely and openly accessible and reusable provides broad visibility for authors, a better return on investment for funders, and greater access to knowledge for other researchers and the general public. And yet, despite OA’s obvious…
Momentum continues to swell in support of the Open COVID Pledge, with the announcement today by Amazon, Facebook, Hewlett Packard Enterprise, IBM, Microsoft, and Sandia National Laboratories, that they are pledging their patents to the public to freely use in support of solving the COVID-19 pandemic. Following in the footsteps of Intel, Fabricatorz Foundation, and…
New beginnings at WIPO On March 4, Daren Tang was nominated director general of the World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO), the United Nations agency dealing with intellectual property matters. Tang is currently the chief executive of the Intellectual Property Office of Singapore (IPOS) and his six-year term as top WIPO official will start on October…
You’ve heard the stories: engineers 3D printing face shields in their basements; do-it-yourself hobbyists sewing face masks; and fashion designers crafting personal protection gowns. Globally, people are trying to help fill the medical supply gap caused by the COVID-19 pandemic through open-source medical hardware. It’s a heartwarming display of global ingenuity, innovation, and collaboration. In this…
Creative Commons has joined forces with other legal experts and leading scientists to offer a simple way for universities, companies, and other holders of intellectual property rights to support the development of medicines, test kits, vaccines, and other scientific discoveries related to COVID-19 for the duration of the pandemic. The Open COVID Pledge grants the…
We are thrilled to announce today that Dr. Tarek Loubani has been awarded the 2020 Bassel Khartabil Fellowship. Loubani is the medical director of Glia, a project focused on using Open Access manufacturing and distribution in order to provide lower costs and vastly increase the accessibility of urgently needed medical supplies and gear. The Fellowship…
The global health crisis is crystalizing the need for policies that support universal access to learning resources. The COVID-19 pandemic has wreaked havoc on over a billion learners’ lives—half of the world’s student population have seen their schools or universities close to slow the spread of the virus. As a result, many educational institutions are…
In response to the global health emergency caused by COVID-19, we’ve seen an array of organizations, publications, and governments make COVID-19 related research open access. For example, the U.S. National Library of Medicine recently released the COVID-19 Open Research Dataset (CORD-19)—a machine-readable coronavirus literature collection with over 29,000 articles available for text and data mining…