The Digital Economy: Openness, Intellectual Property, Standards, and Innovation

Friday, February 8, 2008 - CED, in partnership with the Bay Area Council, hosted a release event and forum on the Digital Connections Council’s latest report, “Harnessing Openness to Transform American Health Care.” The report explored how American health care can be greatly improved by embracing “openness” throughout the health care industry.

More than 80 senior business, education and civic leaders convened for the event, featuring keynote speakers Peter Jerram, CEO of the Public Library of Sciences and Elliot Maxwell, Digital Connections Council Project Director and Communications Program Fellow at Johns Hopkins University. Panelists included Lloyd Dean, CEO, Catholic Healthcare West; Jamie Ferguson, Executive Director of Health Information Technology; Strategy & Policy, Kaiser Permanente; Donald Holmquest, CEO, California Regional Health Information Organization (CalRHIO); and Benjamin R. Williams, Senior Vice President & Chief Information Officer, Catholic Healthcare West.

See CED's Health Care Reform project page for more information about this event.

On January 22, 2008, CED released a new report – Harnessing Openness to Transform American Health Care – that focuses on how to improve health care by giving people more access to information and making the information more responsive to their contributions. The report touches on the entire production system for health care from biomedical research to clinical trials to electronic health care records and patient/doc interactions. It also addresses open access publishing of research results and access to clinical trial data, openness in public health, the impact of greater openness on approval of medical devices, and open models of innovation. The report was prepared by CED's Digital Connections Council (DCC). The DCC is a group of information technology experts from CED-affiliated companies established to advise CED on the policy issues associated with the digital economy and emerging technologies. This report follows the late 2007 release of CED’s report, Quality, Affordable Health Care For All: Beyond The Employer-based Health-insurance System, which includes findings and recommendations on health care reform from CED.

On April 17, 2006, CED released Open Standards, Open Source, and Open Innovation: Harnessing the Benefits of Openness. The new report (also available in a Chinese Language version) details the benefits of openness in three areas - open standards, open-source software, and open innovation - and examines the major issues in the debate over whether openness should be encouraged or not. The report explains each of these three kinds of openness, details the public policy issues involved with each, and provides policy recommendations for dealing with these issues.

The report was prepared by CED's Digital Connections Council (DCC). The DCC is a group of information technology experts from CED-affiliated companies established to advise CED on the policy issues associated with the digital economy and emerging technologies. CED Trustee Paul M. Horn, Senior Vice President, Research at IBM, is Chair of the DCC. Elliot Maxwell, a key advisor on digital economy issues in the Clinton Administration, served as project director.

The DCC's first report, Promoting Innovation and Economic Growth: The Special Problem of Digital Intellectual Property (2004), dealt with the highly contentious intellectual property issues involved with file-sharing and peer-to-peer networks. The new report builds upon the message of the first paper - that heavy-handed enforcement of intellectual property rules and reliance on business practices designed for the trade of physical goods can stifle the collaboration and innovation that is vital to the growth of the digital economy.

For more information, contact Amy Morse at 202-296-5860 ext. 29 or amy.morse@ced.org.

Promoting Innovation and Economic Growth: The Special Problem of Digital Intellectual Property, a new CED policy statement is now available. The statement includes an overview of copyright law and business innovation, as well as recommendations for overcoming the challenges inherent in digital media. Developing and testing new business models is a central recommendation set forth by the CED statement. The Digital Connections Council, chaired by CED Trustee Paul M. Horn, IBM Senior Vice President of Research, created Promoting Innovation and Economic Growth: The Special Problem of Digital Intellectual Property. The full text of the report, as well as a press release and the Executive Summary, can be found at the links below.

On May 9, 2001, CED released The Digital Economy: Promoting Competition, Innovation, and Opportunity. This report analyzes several of the major policy issues generated by the growth of e-commerce in the areas of competition, intellectual property, privacy and security, and the gap in skills and income.

CED partnered with the Internet Education Foundation (IEF) on the release of the report and will continue our partnership with IEF and the Internet Caucus Advisory Committee to host discussions on important Internet policy issues, including IEF's conference series on the State of the Net. For more information visit www.neted.org or www.stateofthe.net.

The e-commerce project was co-chaired by Irwin Dorros, formerly Executive Vice President of Telecordia Technologies; Robert H. Lessin, Chairman of Wit Capital Corporation; and Ellen R. Marram, President & CEO of efdex inc.

CED also recently partnered with The Canadian E-Business Opportunities Roundtable, a private-sector led initiative formed in 1999 to develop a strategy for accelerating Canada's participation in the Internet economy, to present a forum on "The Digital Economy and North American Economic Growth." For more information about the Roundtable and their latest publication Fast Forward 2.0, visit www.ebusinessroundtable.ca.

The Digital Connections Council

Chaired by Trustee Paul M. Horn, IBM Senior Vice President of Research, CED’s Digital Connections Council is examining business-related e-commerce and digital economy issues. Members of the Council include corporate representatives, primarily chief technology officers, from such companies as American Express, Citigroup, Eastman Kodak, Lucent Technologies, Pfizer Inc., Volera, Unisys, and others.

The Council is building on recommendations made in CED’s 2001 report The Digital Economy: Promoting Competition, Innovation, and Opportunity. This report analyzed major e-commerce policy issues in the areas of competition, intellectual property, privacy and security, and the gap in skills and income. The Council is addressing the role of "fair use" and intellectual property protection; the framework for wider use of open source software; the relationship between privacy and security and how this trade-off affects business; and jurisdiction of the Internet.

At CED's May 2001 Annual Meeting, CED and the Canadian E-Business Opportunities Roundtable hosted a joint forum in New York on "The Digital Economy and North American Economic Growth." The forum focused on the important role of business in shaping the policies driving e-commerce in both Canada and the United States.

Forum panelists included Leonard J. Brody, CEO and Chairman, ipreo; Irwin Dorros, President, Dorros Associates; John Eckert, President, Canadian Venture Capital Association; Everett M. Ehrlich, President, ESC Co. and former Under Secretary of Commerce; Edmund B. Fitzgerald, Managing Director, Woodmont Associates and former Chairman and CEO, Nortel; V. Peter Harder, Deputy Minister, Industry Canada; Peter Nicholson, Chief Strategy Officer, BCE Inc.; Donald K. Peterson, President and CEO, Avaya Inc.; Paula Stern, President, The Stern Group, Inc.; Tom Weber, e-commerce columnist, The Wall Street Journal; and John D. Wetmore, Vice President, ibm.com, IBM Americas.

On October 19, 2001, CED and the Canadian E-Business Opportunities Roundtable hosted "The Private Sector's Role in Creating Digital Opportunities," a half-day workshop in Toronto on the digital divide. The keynote address was given by the Honourable Brian Tobin, Canada's Minister of Industry. CED President Charles Kolb and CED Trustee Carolyn Chin Chairman of Commtouch and Kindmark participated in the forum.