James Boyle (academic)

James Boyle (academic)

James Boyle (born 1959) is a Scottish legal academic who is currently the William Neal Reynolds Professor of Law and co-founder of the Center for the Study of the Public Domain at Duke University School of Law in Durham, North Carolina.

He was one of the founding board members of Creative Commons, and formerly held the position of Chairman. He also co-founded Science Commons, which aims to expand the Creative Commons mission into the realm of scientific and technical data, and ccLearn, a division of Creative Commons aimed at facilitating access to open education resources.

Boyle graduated from the University of Glasgow in 1980 and subsequently studied at Harvard Law School. He joined Duke University School of Law in July 2000. He had previously taught at American University, Yale, Harvard, and the University of Pennsylvania Law School.

He is the author of Shamans, Software and Spleens: Law and Construction of the Information Society as well as a novel published under a Creative Commons license, The Shakespeare Chronicles.

In his latest work on intellectual property, The Public Domain: Enclosing the Commons of the Mind (2008), Boyle argues that the current system of copyright protections fails to fulfill the original intent of copyright: rewarding and encouraging creativity. It was also published under a non-commercial Creative Commons license. In 2003, he won the World Technology Award for Law for his work on the intellectual ecology of the public domain, and on the "Second Enclosure Movement" that threatens it.

Boyle also contributes a column to the Financial Times New Technology Policy Forum.