What do bird watchers and bird hunters have in common? The question was posed by Duke University law professor James Boyle, one of the hosts of an extraordinary meeting on intellectual property held last November at the Duke Law School in Durham, NC. Boyle's answer is provocative: after years of pursuing separate agendas, these incongruous groups ultimately came to understand that they have a shared interest in protecting the "environment." Does the same principle hold in the intellectual-property realm? Do we all, no matter what our fields of endeavor, need to cultivate a greater appreciation for the IP equivalent of the natural environment? Judging from the energy and commonality at the Duke meeting―billed as the first-ever "Conference on the Public Domain"―it would appear that we do.
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