The Sage Commons is a novel information platform being built by an international partnership of researchers and stakeholders to define the molecular basis of disease and guide the development of effective human therapeutics and diagnostics.
The Sage Commons will be used to integrate diverse molecular mega-data sets, to build predictive bionetworks and to offer advanced tools proven to provide unique new insights into human disease biology. Users will also be contributors that advance the knowledge base and tools through their cumulative participation.
The public access mission of the Sage Commons requires the development of a new strategic and legal framework to protect the rights of contributors while providing widespread access to integrative genomics resources.
Bio
John Wilbanks
As VP of Science, John Wilbanks runs the Science Commons project at Creative Commons. He came to Creative Commons from a Fellowship at the World Wide Web Consortium in Semantic Web for Life Sciences. Previously, he founded and led to acquisition Incellico, a bioinformatics company that built semantic graph networks for use in pharmaceutical research & development. Previously, John was the first Assistant Director at the Berkman Center for Internet and Society at Harvard Law School and also worked in US politics as a legislative aide to U.S. Representative Fortney (Pete) Stark.
John holds a Bachelor of Arts in Philosophy from Tulane University and studied modern letters at the Universite de Paris IV (La Sorbonne). He was a research affiliate at the MIT Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory in the project on Mathematics and Computation. John also serves on the Advisory Boards of the U.S. National Library of Medicine’s PubMed Central, the Open Knowledge Foundation, the Open Knowledge Definition, and the International Advisory Board of the Prix Ars Electronica’s Digital Communities awards. He also serves on the Board of Directors of the Fedora Commons digital repository organization.
Exclusive right to reproduce, publish, or sell an original work of authorship. It protects from unauthorized copying any published or unpublished work that is fixed in a tangible medium (including a book or manuscript, musical score or recording, script or dramatic production, painting or sculpture, or blueprint or building). It does not protect matters such as an idea, process, or system. Protection in the U.S. now extends for the life of the creator plus 70 years after his or her death. Works made for hire are now protected for a maximum of 95 years from the date of publication or 120 years from the date of the creation of the work. In 1988 the U.S. joined the Bern Convention, an agreement that governs international copyright. The Digital Millennium Copyright Act, adopted in the U.S. in 1998, expanded owners' control over digital forms of their creations and penalized persons who sought to evade technological shields (such as encryption) for copyrighted material. See alsointellectual property; patent; trademark.