ABSTRACT

Intellectual property law increasingly has become part of the backdrop for scientific research. Both the fruits of research and the tools used to obtain those fruits may be the subject of patent, copyright, trade secrecy, or other proprietary rights. Anticipating the impact of such laws, and sorting out the competing proprietary interests may prove to be a challenge for scientific collaboration, and especially for “virtual” collaborations that take advantage of emerging digital technologies. Consequently, this chapter surveys the law of intellectual property as it applies to such technologies, with particular emphasis on the types of intellectual property issues likely to arise in collaborative scientific research.