Congress shall have [the] power …To promote the progress of science and the useful arts, by securing for limited times to authors and inventors the exclusive right to their respective writings and discoveries…

Article I, Section 8, Clause 8
U.S. Constitution

Combine the complexity of copyright law with its application to technology and it is not a surprise that confusion abounds.  In some cases, the confusion is not about anything new.  How can copyright law be used to protect an idea?  In other cases, the confusion stems from something that has been around for a long time—plagiarism—but is now infinitely easier to accomplish due to the copy and paste functions of any basic word processing software.  Yet others arise from the new vocabulary associated with new applications of emerging technologies.  What is open access?  Is it related to public domain?

How can copyright law be used to protect an idea?  The short answer is that it can’t.  Copyright experts are quite familiar with what is referred to in the field as the “idea/expression dichotomy.”  That dichotomy is grounded in the words found in a portion of the U.S. Constitution quoted above.  Congress is directed to create a system of limited monopolies that secures to authors and inventors the exclusive right to their respective writings and discoveries…   Consistent with this directive, the rules of copyright law protect the expression of an idea by giving creators a copyright.  Copyright law does not protect the idea itself, however.  If it did, the progress envisioned in the words of the Founding Fathers would instead suffer.

Plagiarism is nothing new.  But advances in technology now permit the copying and pasting of vast amounts of text and images with nothing more than a few clicks of the mouse.  The ease and frequency with which this occurs even led to a new line of businesses—plagiarism detection services such as Turnitn®.  Yet, many people are unclear about the relationship between plagiarism and copyright infringement.  By definition, copyright infringement is against the law; but plagiarism is not.  Plagiarism refers to the failure to properly credit someone else’s work.  It is a violation of professional protocols that may carry sanctions from professional associations, but usually not from a court of law.  The only time plagiarism becomes copyright infringement is when the copying is so extensive that is also violates the rights of a copyright owner.

New and emerging technologies often come with new vocabulary and terminology.  This is the case with the Open Access movement.  In academia, Open Access tends to focus on making research and scholarly works widely available.  In practice, it typically refers to making such works freely available such as via an unsecured web site.  This does not mean, however, that Open Access works are in the public domain.  Most works posted in Open Access sites are covered by copyright law.  Open Access is about the method of distributing works, not about copyright ownership. 

Slovenian translation of this article can be found here: http://lawyerscheck.com/glossator~/protecting-ideas-sl