The Public Domain: Enclosing the Commons of the Mind

A growing body of literature criticizes the expansion of intellectual property over new subject matter, its extension to new lengths, and the reduction of safeguards that protect intellectual property users and the public at large.1 In the face of these critiques of intellectual property, one set of studies seeks to consider what has often been posed as intellectual property’s opposite: the public domain. It is argued that focusing critique on the existing intellectual property system is not sufficient if we fail to give due attention to the contributions and problems of the public domain. Several new works examine the public domain, the information commons, an