A blueprint for the public trust, and, The role of intellectual property as a new area of the public domain

This Social Action Project Demonstrating Excellence (PDE) consists of two pieces of work. "A Memorandum to Legislative Counsel: A Blueprint for The Public Trust" outlines the framework for the Public Trust Establishment Act, which would create the Office of the Public Trust as an independent arm of the Library of Congress, and through a three-phase development, fund both the office itself and projects of the nature described in the act. "The Role of Intellectual Property as a New Area of the Public Domain" is a contextual essay surveying the evolution of the concepts, legal definitions, contractual arrangements, and commercial ramifications of both public and private real and intellectual property primarily within the United States, but including such foreign practices as a "paid public domain."; The United States, having achieved its independence at the height of the mechanical age, when one human being could legally own another, now stands at the dawn of the information age when the ownership of one's own ideas is guaranteed as an unalienable right. Such rights extend to any individual or enterprise pursuing the commercial use of intellectual property protected under U.S. patent or copyright laws. Prior permission for such commercial use must be obtained, and is subject to a royalty or fee payable to the owner of the patent or copyright. Currently, when this legal protection expires, these works enter the public domain and are subject to free and unrestricted use without permission, fee, or royalty due anyone at any time ever.; The original thesis developed herein is that by establishing a legal equivalence between real public domain and intellectual public domain property, based on a principle dating back to the Articles of Confederation, a new system of ongoing, non-tax-based revenues paid to the Office of The Public Trust, could be generated by the commercial use of public domain works and directed toward the institutions that preserve, protect, and present these works.