Category Archives: Intellectual Property

Fair Use Intellectual Property Technology

Rorschach Revisited

July 29, 2009 – 5:17 am

The controversy over the publication of the Rorschach test plates on Wikipedia entertained earlier in this post has now spread to the technology section of the New York Times.  The Times’ sensationalist ‘Has Wikipedia Created a Rorschach Cheat Sheet?’ opens for a fairly standard and not so sensationalist pro versus con consideration of the merits for the case to publish or remove the ten Rorschach image plates from Wikipedia.  The essence of the debate as considered by the Times is that on one hand there may still be some value to the research potential of the plates that may be preserved by keeping them protected under the general ethos of the psychologist to prevent amateur and lay exposure to test materials, while on the other hand there is nothing legally protecting the images on the plates which have already spread into the public domain and as evidenced by their appearance on Wikipedia into public circulation.

Rorschach_blot_06[5]

[Plate 6 from the Rorschach test]
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Fair Use Intellectual Property

Public Domain

July 16, 2009 – 12:34 pm

So the images from the original Rorschach test are now available online at Wikipedia, and their inclusion on the page is somewhat controversial. Arguments are made that exposure to these images in the general public may be detrimental to their scientific value as they are used for testing patient’s and study subject’s interpretation of these images. The problem is that the images used in the test have fallen into the public domain outside of copyright protection and they are now entirely free from legal protection for most any use, and they may be distributed readily without restriction and used in derivative works.

Rorschach Plate Number 1

The first of the ten images I recall seeing in more than a few movies, and I think most reasonable people would not think too much of this particular image having its value further compromised through public exposure. A fair number of people in a clinical environment would when asked what they think of this image respond that they are being presented with an inkblot test.
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