Prize to innovation for Coloriuris

Last June, during a presentation at the European Intellectual Property Teachers Network workshop in Newcastle, when I mentioned ColorIuris as one of the forms of alternative licensing I could see that most attendants made notes about the tool (leading me to assume that they had never heard about it before). Well, ColorIuris is an alternative form of licensing but goes far beyond that: it is actually a form of administering protected content, putting the holder of the right in control of what can and cannot be done with the creation in question. It relies on a series of well-crafted contracts that allow the right-holder to express in a clear and precise form what she/he wants the user to do with a work. The legal analysis of the tools has always made me, and others, think that it could represent the solution that other forms are not providing, but it now has gone a step further with the recognition given by the Ministry of Industry, Tourism and Trade of Spain that awarded to ColorIuris one of the FICOD 08 Prizes to Innovation for its creation of a “simple tool for self-managing copyrights”…more than very well done! A proper celebration would provide another excuse to go to Zaragoza in winter…