Irony? Publisher Celebrates IP By Revoking IP

There’s no better way to celebrate something than by doing the opposite of it. That seems to be the message of a leading publishing company. In a campaign today to hail the virtues of intellectual property, it appears to be hoping to gain goodwill – and possibly some sales – by removing intellectual property on some of its products.

The Edward Elgar publishing company’s campaign for World IP Day today is entitled, Free Access to Scholarship, and it states:

“To celebrate World Intellectual Property Day, Edward Elgar Publishing are providing free access to IP scholarship on the theme of digital copyright and creativity.

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Chapter and article links below.”

It provides open access to numerous – admittedly intriguing – chapters from copyrighted academic books and journals, like samplers of products for sale.

Exceptions and limitations to copyright are a part of copyright law. But publishers have been under fire for years to make products open access in order to encourage sharing and creativity, and have had to defend the benefits to authors, research and business of copyrighting content.

So it might be said that the way to celebrate the success and utility of intellectual property would be to put it to use, or add more of it. Is the message confusing?