Creative Commons for Startups

Hosted by Creative Commons Ireland in collaboration with Creative Commons UK and the IT Law Clinic, School of Law, University College Cork

Creative Commons (CC) works to offer creators a way to protect their works while encouraging certain uses of them, to declare "some rights reserved." This is a middle path between absolute copyright protection (all rights reserved) and pure public domain availability.

This event will discuss how Creative Commons can be useful to startups. For example, startups can make use of images subject to Creative Commons licences in designing a website. It is also possible for startups to utilise open business models with CC licences at their core. Two case studies of businesses of this kind are provided at the end of this page – OpenDesk and The Noun project.

Participants will include:

• Dr Andres Guadamuz, Senior Lecturer in Law, University of Sussex
• Professor Joseph Feller, Business Information Systems, UCC
• Professor Maeve McDonagh, School of Law, UCC
• Dr Darius Whelan, School of Law, UCC

Date: Friday 17 February 2017

Time: 12.00 to 13.00

Location: Boole Library, Creative Zone

This event is open to all. In order to confirm numbers, please register your attendance at
https://cc-startups.eventbrite.ie.

Funded by the Creative Commons Awesome Fund 2016-2017.

Creative Commons Ireland is hosted at UCC School of Law. The Public Leads are Darius Whelan and Louise Crowley. See www.creativecommonsireland.org.

Creative Commons UK – England & Wales - https://europe.creativecommons.org/affiliate/uk_england_and_wales

The IT Law Clinic at UCC School of Law provides free legal information to startups –
www.ucc.ie/en/lawsite/currentstudents/it-law-clinic/

Case Studies on use of Creative Commons in Business
(adapted from Paul Stacey’s articles at https://medium.com/@pgstacey )

OpenDesk – www.opendesk.cc - London

OpenDesk has curated a collection of digital designs for furniture from a range of international designers. Designs are Creative Commons licensed and can be downloaded and customized by users to fit their specific needs. Users can make furniture themselves from the design for non-commercial use in a do-it-yourself fashion. However, conversion of a digital design into physical pieces of wood usually requires specialized milling tools controlled by computers. OpenDesk has partnered with maker businesses all over the world that have such tools. OpenDesk and their designers make revenue when a user wants a local maker to do the cutting for them.

The Noun Project – www.thenounproject.com – USA

The Noun Project is a platform for visual symbols and icons. The Noun Project aggregates and curates symbols and icons from a global network and profiles the designers of each work. Icons and symbols are licensed under CC licences. There are currently over 150,000 icons available.
Users can download and use the icons and symbols for free as long as they abide by the CC license and give attribution to the original creator. Revenue is generated when users do not want to give attribution. Using the symbols without attribution requires users to pay. In addition, the Noun Project has built out a range of additional tools and services to support bulk use for a fee, integration of symbols and icons to apps using an API, and has released a Lingo app for organizing collections. All these additional tools generate revenue. Revenue is split between designers and the Noun Project.