Capitalizing on the momentum from the recent White House event — which appointed citizen science coordinators in Federal agencies, highlighted legislation introduced in Congress concerning funding mechanisms and clarifying legal and administrative issues to using citizen science, and launched a new Federal toolkit on citizen science and crowdsourcing — the Commons Lab is hosting a panel examining the legal issues affecting federal citizen science and the potential intellectual property rights that could arise from using citizen science.
This panel corresponds with the launch of two new Commons Lab Publications:
- Managing Intellectual Property Rights in Citizen Science, by Teresa Scassa and Haewon Chung
- Crowdsourcing, Citizen Science, and the Law: Legal Issues Affecting Federal Agencies, by Robert Gellman
As a project manager or researcher conducting citizen science, either at the federal level or in partnership with governmental agencies, there are certain issues like the Information Quality Act that will impact citizen science and crowdsourcing project design. Being aware of these issues prior to initiating projects will save time and provide avenues for complying with or “lawfully evading” potential barriers. The Commons Lab web-enabled policy tool will also be demonstrated at the event. This tool helps users navigate the complicated laws discussed in Robert Gellman’s report on legal issues affecting citizen science.
Intellectual property rights in the age of open source, open data, open science and also, citizen science, are complicated and require significant forethought before embarking on a citizen science project. Please join us to hear from two experts on the legal barriers and intellectual property rights issues in citizen science and collect a hard copy of the reports.
Speakers
Teresa Scassa, Canada Research Chair in Information Law and Professor in the Faculty of Law, University of Ottawa
Haewon Chung, Doctoral Candidate in Law, University of Ottawa
Robert Gellman, Privacy and Information Policy Consultant in Washington, DC
Moderator
Jay Benforado, Office of Research and Development, U.S. Environmental Protection Agency
