Tensions between intellectual property and knowledge discovery in the digital age

Editor's Notes

• #3: Top 2 cited papers in high energy physics in 2013
• #6: Text and data mining (TDM) is the process of deriving information from machine-read material. It works by copying large quantities of material, extracting the data, and recombining it to identify patterns. TDM is essentially another method of reading, done by the computer rather than the human eye. It is a natural next step for the research process, as more and more content is electronic. For libraries what this means is that researchers are able to extract more value from our vast collections- born digital and digitised. I’d like to show you some examples of the added value of TDM.
• #7: In 1986, an information scientist, Don Swanson, coined the term undiscovered public knowledge. By ‘knowledge’ he meant products of human intellectual activity as encoded in the public record (so externally manifested). The challenge was to overcome the “unruly problem of meaning” and to make to connection between the outputs of different disciplines in order to draw inferences. The classic example of Swanson’s theory was the link he made between Raynard’s disease and fish oil. Swanson made the link between one area of research, which was on the health benefits of fish oils, which was found to thin the blood, and research in Raynars’s, which identified high blood viscosity as one of the symptoms of the diseases. Making this link Swanson was able to postulate that fish oil could help treat Raynard’s. He was correct. Implicit
• #9: Physicist T.C. Mendenhall hired 2 women to count the length of words in Shakepeares works. Word length frequency curve remains consistent- way to ascertain authenticity. Unlike most English authors he used more 4 letter words than 3 letter words. No correlation to Bacon but (as was discovered years later) was as similar to  Christopher Marlowe (another Elizabethan playwrite and poet)  as he was to himself
• #10: Marker of Shakespeares writing is his comparative underuse of words and selections of words Identified 20 most used words across body of literature of period. New scoring of markers not just based on the use of words but on the underuse. Excellent methods for identifying markers in large datasets  fluctuations of the observed frequencies of words all to (infinitive) now ye
• #11: Biomarker could be elevated enzyme levels, help to indvidualise treatment, panels of biomarkers more effective, increaing sensitivity and specificity. application of scoring method developed previously- mislabelled samples, significant outliers etc in big data
• #12: 42 protiens identifies as interacting with muscular distriphoy0 7 know. A few false positives, others verified. PPIs can be targeted with drugs to inhibit interaction. More targeted, less invasive treatment
• #13: Enhance data using natural language processing and linked data. EG in the Netherlands there is a project called Expose- exploratory political search, which converts the parliamentary records (since 1500s)records into XML and makes them linked open data, they link them up to related collections such as the KB’s newspaper collection
• #15: Developed an the antidote to the constant measuring of economic indicators to assess how a country is doing, it measures happiness instead. Crawls Twitter daily. Data via API. Download database of words
• #19: Strikes at the heart of what libraries do.
• #20: Will Greenacre
• #21: Will Greenacre
• #24: The free flow of information and ideas is an essential human right4. It is a catalyst for the production of human knowledge, which underpins welfare and prosperity. Societies around the world have chosen to protect certain limited rights in intellectual property as incentives both to innovation and the dissemination of knowledge. Intellectual property law was never intended to cover facts, ideas and pure data. However the modern application of intellectual property law is increasingly becoming an obstacle to knowledge creation and dissemination that use even these most simple building blocks of knowledge. In some countries, copyright law5 in particular has been interpreted to restrict the ability to apply computer reading and analysis to otherwise legally-available content. Other legislative frameworks such as patent law and database law may have a similar impact. When intellectual property law allows content to be read and analysed manually by humans but not by their machines, it has failed its original purposes.
• #25: Providers of content should respect the intellectual privacy of individual readers and should take measures to protect readers’ privacy from interference by any external body. Any exception, which for example would result in an encroachment of individual privacy, will need to be necessary and proportionate and provided for by law. The use of facts, data and ideas must not prejudice the legitimate rights of individuals to privacy and a private life.
• #26: Generally, licences and contract terms that regulate and restrict how individuals may analyse and use facts, data and ideas are unacceptable and inhibit innovation and the creation of new knowledge and, therefore, should not be adopted. Similarly, it is unacceptable that technical measures in digital rights management systems should inhibit the lawful right to perform content mining.
• #27: The observation of well-established ethical norms in research and business, as well as the continued development of such standards and laws, must be supported and encouraged in order to ensure that content mining technologies are deployed for the benefit of society.
• #28: As facts, data, and ideas are not copyrightable it does not make sense to restrict ethical commercial use of those facts, data, and ideas extracted from content which has been obtained legally. It is recognised that while patent law is designed to protect innovations and inventions, this is not meant to encompass facts and data. Restrictions on the use of facts, data and ideas can have a serious impact on innovation and on economic development globally. It can also reduce the ability to use tools and processes which can benefit citizens in the areas of health, science, employment, research, the environment and culture.