What do bird watchers and bird hunters have in common? The question was posed by Duke University law professor James Boyle, one of the hosts of an extraordinary meeting on intellectual property held last November at the Duke Law School in Durham, NC. Boyle's answer is provocative: after years of pursuing separate agendas, these incongruous groups ultimately came to understand that they have a shared interest in protecting the "environment."

Does the same principle hold in the intellectual-property realm? Do we all, no matter what our fields of endeavor, need to cultivate a greater appreciation for the IP equivalent of the natural environment? Judging from the energy and commonality at the Duke meeting-billed as the first-ever "Conference on the Public Domain"-it would appear that we do.

Let's consider this environmental analogy. As recently as the 1960s, there was no "environment" in the broad sense of the word. Sure, some conservation groups like the Sierra Club had long been in the wilderness protection business. And Rachel Carson's landmark Silent Spring, published in 1962, brought the misuse of pesticides to public attention. But still, even with rallying points like the Cuyahoga River catching fire in Cleveland in 1969, the people who worried about such things tended to see them as disparate issues. Like water pollution. Or overpopulation. It wasn't until 1970 that such groups finally came together at the first "Earth Day."