The public domain is the realm of material—ideas, images, sounds, discoveries, facts, texts—that is unprotected by intellectual property rights and free for all to use or build upon. Our economy, culture and technology depend on a delicate balance between that which is, and is not, protected by exclusive intellectual property rights. Both the incentives provided by intellectual property and the freedom provided by the public domain are crucial to the balance. But most contemporary attention has gone to the realm of the protected.
F. Abel, M. Frank, N. Henze, D. Krause, D. Plappert, and P. Siehndel. The Semantic Web, 6th International Semantic Web Conference,
2nd Asian Semantic Web Conference, ISWC 2007 + ASWC 2007,
Busan, Korea, November 11-15, 2007, volume 4825 of Lecture Notes in Computer Science, page 871-878. Springer, (2007)