Who Owns Your Ideas?

by Scott Mitchell POWERFUL CORPORATIONS, the high cost of research and communication tools like the Internet have the potential to destroy academics’ right to control their own ideas, warned speakers at an intellectual property conference at the University of California at Berkeley. The conference, held in early-November, questioned whether intellectual property will become “The Next Ivory Trade.” Participants scrutinized “the crisis” currently preoccupying university and research officials across the United States. More than 100 delegates attended from UC campuses, Stanford University and a number of East Coast institutions. Richard Scheffler, chair of the Berkeley Faculty Association, the group that co-sponsored the […]