The Research On Public Domain In Copyright Law

While intellectual property rights have a tremendous influence on thedevelopment of science and technology and the improvement of humanculture. Intellectual property is designed to grant the monopoly of power toencourage the creation. But the ultimate aim is to promote the development ofscience and technology and the improvement of human culture. Granting thecopyright is just a means, while safeguarding the public interest is the ultimateaim. As a source of creation, the public domain is an important protection ofintellectual property rights. While driven by economic interests, the protectionof intellectual property rights has shown a trend of non-rational expansion inrecent years, and it caused a lot of threat to the public domain. Therefore, thethesis studies several issues to create a rich and well-established mechanism inthe public domain system.This thesis explores the definition, scope, and the reasonable existence ofpublic domain. The first part is an overview of the public domain, includingthe origin and definition. This part has explored the etymology and history ofthe public domain, and makes a definition of public domain. The second part explores the scope of the public domain. By the analysis of copyright law, thispart determines the scope of the public domain. The third part is to prove therationality of the public domain, and to seek a variety of theories to prove thereasonable existence of public domain, which includes the legislative purposesof copyright law, Locke’s labor theory of property rights and EconomicsPerspective. It provides theoretical support for the research of the publicdomain.Based on the theory of public domain, the thesis studies the practicaldifficulties and response measures. This part analyzes the crisis of the publicdomain, which includes the expansion of copyright, the copyright abuse, andthe technical measures on the threats to the public domain. Then the thesisdiscusses the protections and improvements of the public domain, makespecific measures on these subjects. Meanwhile, the thesis also discusses threekinds of promotion of public domain.