Given this heritage, it is little wonder that the University of Edinburgh has taken such a keen interest in the intersection between intellectual property, cultural heritage and the public domain. The AHRC Research Centre for Studies in Intellectual Property and Technology Law has been particularly productive over the last decade with its research projects, calendar of events and its lively online journal, Script-ed.

In the collection, Intellectual Property: The Many Faces of the Public Domain, Hector MacQueen and Charlotte Waelde have drawn together research arising out of a series of workshops held by the Centre at the University of Edinburgh. The volume explores the history, role and function of the public domain across a range of fields of intellectual property. Hector MacQueen and Charlotte Waelde comment:

"The importance of the idea of the ‘public domain’ in the cultural and scientific contexts is that it is a body of knowledge and information to which there is general access for use for purposes such as education (formal and informal) and the further development of knowledge, understanding, creativity and inventiveness."

The collection is a large one, with an introduction and 16 individual contributions.

Hector MacQueen and Charlotte Waelde contend that ‘the public domain has many different faces according to the place from which it is viewed’. The collection provides a European perspective on the public domain as a counterpoint to the dominant US discourse about the public domain and intellectual commons.