A liberal infrastructure in a neoliberal world: the Italian case of GARR

23 gennaio 2023: pubblicato su Zenodo il preprint di un articolo di Roberto Caso e Maria Chiara Pievatolo sull’esperienza italiana di GARR Meet

R. Caso, M.C. Pievatolo, A liberal infrastructure in a neoliberal world: the Italian case of GARR, forthcoming in Journal of Intellectual Property, Information Technology and Electronic Commerce, Zenodo, <https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.7561821>

This paper aims to outline some issues concerning the interaction, in the European Union law, between data policy, university regulation, open science, intellectual property and infrastructure policy. On the one hand, such issues primarily regard intellectual property: exclusive rights deriving from copyright and related rights, patent, trademarks, trade secrets. On the other hand, they also concern forms of exclusive control on data that are not strictly related to intellectual property, but enhanced by the control on technology and infrastructure. This exclusive control can accompany or be independent from the protection of intellectual property conferred by law.

To make science open and to limit the market power of intellectual monopolies and oligopolies, restricting and reshaping intellectual property rights on data is not enough. It is also necessary to create or to revive public infrastructures and to implement open standards for texts, data and code. An example of public infrastructure for university is the Italian consortium GARR, which during the Covid-19 pandemic contributed to anchor the local debate about academic and teaching freedom to an actual and viable alternative, protecting independent and public knowledge not just de iure but de facto as well”.