Lost In The Limbo: Orphan Works, The Public Domain And The Case For A Global Licensing Framework
- IJLLR Journal
- Apr 22
- 1 min read
Debasmita Barik, BBA LLB, KIIT School of Law, Bhubaneswar
ABSTRACT
Orphan works: copyrighted works whose right-holders cannot be identified or located; constitute one of the most intractable paradoxes in modern intellectual property law. The international framework that was to provide immunity for these authors, in particular the automatic protection regime introduced by the Berne Convention, has generated an enormous and mounting corpus of works that is legally inaccessible to the public, but culturally vital to literature. This paper investigates the structural drivers of the orphan works problem, evaluates legislative and administrative responses in the United States, European Union, Canada and India, as well as a review of the adequacy of each regime in terms of their own and to the others. This paper contends that individual national solutions may fail to provide meaningful access under present circumstances and suggests that a multilateral and WIPO-administered licensing framework, based on the Canadian model (the state compulsory licence), it is the most feasible way for the state to achieve harmony between copyright protection on one hand and making sure that everything belongs in the public domain.
