“Creative commons” public licensing for the competitive markets of the publishing, printing, and packaging industries

Abstract

Intellectual property rights protection is one of the major strategies of publishing, printing, and packaging companies. It strengthens competitive advantages in a highly competitive environment, particularly, in the digital age. New packaging structure, and packaging content and visual design are valuable targets to be protected under IPR mechanisms. Under IPR mechanisms, not only IPR costs are high for R&D but also the high risk being charged with IPR infringement. For small and mid-size design service companies, it is too complicate to treat IPR issues and difficult to reduce IPR costs. Is there any IPR mechanism that small and mid-size design companies could follow to reduce intellectual property costs and the cost of being charged with IPR infringement? “Technology and knowledge sharing” has developed since the last decade of the 20th century. The open-source movement philosophy has developed to several mechanisms, such as, Open Design, Science Commons, and Creative Commons. This paper is focused on “Creative Commons and IP sharing”, to discuss the value of IP sharing for design fields. “Increasing marginal utility” is a major economic theory in this paper used to describe what benefits Open Design And Creative Commons could contribute to the design, publishing, printing, and packaging industries. Expert interviews and case studies are major research methods of this article.