The Access To Knowledge Conference is taking place this weekend at the Yale Law School, on access to knowledge policy, intellectual property rights, and the importance of the knowledge commons.

In the digital era, most multinational corporations and policymakers are of the view that the current trend characterised by increasing intellectual property rights and corporate control over knowledge best serve society's interests. At the same time, however, a growing number of commentators believe that widespread access to knowledge (A2K) and the preservation of a healthy knowledge commons are the real basis for sustainable human development. Nonetheless, intellectual property-based approaches continue to singlehandedly dictate global legal norms and shape national legal infrastructures.

The first goal of the Yale A2K Initiative is to come up with a new analytic framework for analysing the possibly distortive effects of public policies relying exclusively on intellectual property rights. Beyond this aim, the A2K initiative seeks to support the adoption and development of alternative ways to foster greater access to knowledge in the digitally connected environment.