WASHINGTON D.C. - The Progress & Freedom Foundation's Center for the Study of Digital Property (IPcentral.info) is announcing the creation of the IP Academic Advisory Council. Members of the Advisory Council will draw attention to issues surrounding intellectual property rights through academic papers, select events and continued involvement with the work of the Center and PFF.

Distinguished members of the academic community were selected to join the Council based on their study of intellectual property. Members include:

• Donald Boudreaux, Chair, Department of Economics, George Mason University

•  John Duffy, Professor of Law, George Washington University

•  Richard Epstein, James Parker Hall Distinguished Service Professor of Law, Faculty Director for Curriculum, and Director, Law and Economics Program, University of Chicago

•  Mark Grady, Professor of Law, University of California, Los Angeles

•  Stan Liebowitz, Professor of Managerial Economics, University of Texas at Dallas School of Management

•  Douglas Lichtman, Professor of Law, University of Chicago

•  Julia Mahoney, Professor of Law, David H. Ibbeken Research Professor, University of Virginia School of Law

•  Ronald J. Mann, Ben H. & Kitty King Powell Chair in Business and Commercial Law, Co-Director, Center for Law, Business & Economics, The University of Texas School of Law

•  Fred McChesney, James B. Haddad Professor, Northwestern University Law School, Professor, Department of Management and Strategy, Kellogg Graduate School of Business, Northwestern University

•  Adam Mossoff, Assistant Professor of Law, Michigan State University

•  Mark Schultz, Assistant Professor of Law, Southern Illinois University

The IP Academic Advisory Council is Co-Chaired by James V. DeLong, PFF Senior Fellow and Director of the Center for the Study of Digital Property (CSDP), and Solveig Singleton, PFF Senior Adjunct Fellow and contributor to CSDP. Amy V. Smorodin, PFF's Director of Communications, will act as Secretariat to the Council.

"The Center for the Study of Digital Property will work with the Council, help disseminate their writings, foster communication among them, and draw upon their expertise to enrich the Center's work," says DeLong. "We also want to promote robust debate over intellectual property. People who favor the basic institutions of property rights and markets often differ substantially about limits on property rights, the role of the commons, the need for redefinitions of IP rights in the light of technological change, and many other issues. These issues must be debated, but we want to promote debate directed at improvement rather than destruction."

The Center for the Study of Digital Property, launched in early 2003, is an active participant in the debate regarding peer-to-peer networks, digital rights management, open source licensing, standards and interoperability, patent reform, and other intellectual property issues. The Center's central belief is that commitment to free markets and property rights, combined with the rule of law, rather than regulation, is the best way to organize human economic activity. Its web site, IPcentral.info, houses numerous papers and studies, and features a popular blog that includes both serious and lighthearted examinations of intellectual property.

The Progress & Freedom Foundation is a market-oriented think tank that studies the digital revolution and its implications for public policy. It is a 501(c)(3) research & educational organization.