Europe-China Conference on Intellectual Property in Digital Media

“Optimisation of Intellectual Property value in Digital Media”

(Hotel Crowne Plaza, Pudong, Shanghai – 2006/10/18-20)
Conference site: http://www.ipdm06.org/

Rationale

Media play an important role in industry and society. On the one hand the means to create, manage, distribute and consume media is the reason for existence of a number of industries: broadcasting, end-user device manufacturing, information technology and telecommunication, to name a few. On the other hand the multiplicity of media sources, distribution channels and consumption devices has a profound impact on the way people work, entertain and generally communicate.

Intellectual Property (IP) permeates all aspects of media: IP evolves along the media content value chains from creation, production, content and service provisioning, and eventually consumption, and along the media device value chains from research, technology development and standardisation to product design and manufacturing.

The management of IP in media has always played an important role. In the analogue age the role of management of media content IP was shaped by the nature of analogue technologies and was focused on economically advanced countries. On the media device and service front the management of IP involved a relatively small number of industries with a long tradition of innovation and was applied to a restricted number of IP items. Many rights holders tended to view IP as an “additional” revenue stream to the “main” manufacturing or service revenues, also because the ratio of IP to the value of the product or service tended to be rather small.

In today’s digital age, the role of IP is dramatically changing compared to the previous analogue age. Digital technologies increase the use of media content but at the same time tend to make the traditional ways to manage media content IP less effective. Today, on the media device and service front, a broad range of industries claims IP on a variety of digital media technologies leading to an increasing ratio of IP to the total value of media devices and services while manufacturing, content and service companies, and billions of consumers from economically less advanced societies wish to share in the benefits of digital media. If anything the importance that companies attach to IP management is constantly increasing.

On a background of increased opportunities to augment the value of IP in digital media it is striking to see that the way such IP is actually exploited remains largely anchored to outdated models. As a result, instead of getting more, IP rights holders and users often get less.

The Europe-China Conference on Intellectual Property in Digital Media 2006 (IPDM06) is an international Conference designed to respond to the need for an open debate on how IP in digital media can best be exploited over and beyond well-established but possibly outdated methods. IPDM06 intends to promote an effective debate on new ways to enhance the value of Intellectual Property in Media in an age of industry convergence. It explores this issue from the viewpoint of the multiple disciplines involved, e.g., culture, sociology, law, economy and technology, and for two important players: Europe, an advanced economic space and China, a country that is being confronted with the issue of Intellectual Property in Digital Media in the course of its development.

Topics considered

Papers relevant to the issues highlighted above are solicited. The following is definitely a non-exhaustive list of candidate topics

• New forms of distribution of media content in the value chain
  • Open Source Software
  • Creative Commons
  • Digital Rights Management (DRM)
• Technologies and models to share the value of IP
• Relationships between media content and media device IP
• IP in digital media value chains
• Measuring IP use
• Management of IP through DRM
• Interoperable vs. proprietary DRM
• Collective vs. one-to-one negotiation
• Redistribution of income in digital media value chains
• DRM as a marketing proposition tool vs. value perception for consumers
• Etc.

Submission of papers

We encourage submission of high quality papers for authors to present at the Conference, if accepted. Papers should

• Not exceed 8 single-space pages
• Be in one of the following electronic formats: 7 or 8 bit text, Microsoft Word or Adobe Acrobat
• Contain name and affiliation of all authors
• Provide physical and email address of the principal author
• Include summary and keywords
• Sent by e-mail to

Papers from Europe		Papers from China
Dr. Leonardo Chiariglione		Prof. Wen Gao
CEDEO.net		School of EE & CS
Via Borgionera, 103		Peking University
I-10040 Villar Dora (TO)		Beijing 100871
ITALY		CHINA
leonardo@cedeo.net		wgao@jdl.ac.cn

Papers from outside Europe and China will also be considered and should be sent to either of the contact points.

Summary of milestones

Milestone	day	month
Paper submissions	30	June
Notification of acceptance	31	August
Conference program	1	September
Final paper submission	30	September
Conference proceedings	18	October

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The Europe-China Conference on Intellectual Property in Digital Media is an event of
Sustainable Development for Digital Media EEIG