ReCreating Europe is exploring how intellectual property, especially copyright, might constrain stakeholders, for example by preventing the digitisation of work or other activities. Recent literature has in fact highlighted that there are economic sectors where stakeholders operate outside of intellectual property frameworks (i.e. in IP’s so-called “negative space”). It is therefore interesting to ask whether and how the current IP framework is experienced as a constraint by stakeholders.
Does copyright law, and intellectual property law more generally, constrain some activities within the EU creative industries?
To read more about sectors that operate outside of intellectual property frameworks, please see this interim report on IP's negative space in creative industries. This report provides:
- a genealogy of the concept of ‘negative IP space’ taking into consideration contextual debates in a number of other scholarly fields;
- an assessment of the definitions of negative IP provided so far;
- a systematic literature review covering a breadth of creative industries (e.g. chefs, stand-up comedians, fashion industry);
- on the basis of this discussion, the report puts forward a possible new taxonomy of negative IP spaces based on a structural analysis of the creative and innovative sectors investigated in the literature.