In recent years cultural and creative industries have flourished, on one hand deepening culture and, on the other, expressing rich creativity. After Teldap established cultural relic digital archives, the trend of added-value reuse of cultural relics had to be faced.
Internationally, many renowned museum’s exhibit their themed products,such as pencils, fake eyelashes, cell phone covers, scarves…etc in stores, both on and off-site. Based on the characteristics and spirit of each museum, after design and packaging, the products often sell like hotcakes, allowing visitors to take home art and design to savor at home after viewing the museum collection.

We may gasp in admiration at these successful overseas cases, however, in Taiwan using digital archives result images and materials in products faces a number of obstacles and requires that the implementing unit carefully assess the possibility of it being done.
The first problem that has to be faced is that of archived relic intellectual property rights.
In the past, many organizations have, through researchers or artists’ relatives, gained the ownership of or protection rights for cultural relics, however, in earlier days, the concept of intellectual property rights was not widespread and there was seldom an agreement signed that transferred such rights, consequently, who actually owns intellectual property rights is often a gray area and, when relics are digitized, rights situation problems and concerns come to the surface one after the other.

 
Caption:On-site system demonstration by inventory experts

To enable this type of legal problem to be clarified the Project of Academic and Social Promotions and Applications for Digital Archives and E-Learning authorization platform and standardization promotion program -Inventory and legal advice team program has held the“Digital Archives Authorization Ability Certification Course” and custom-built a “Inventory expert system” for the program , offering rights inventory and authorization legal advice services to assist program staff handle intellectual property rights related problems.
“Doing an inventory is complex work and needs care and patience”. The student said. When carrying out an inventory. It is important to have a grasp of legal concepts and context. During the inventory process, gaining a deeper understanding of the historical context of a cultural relic is not just about the passing on of culture, it also stimulates a sense of mission with regards the efforts of the person that produced the work and desire to use traditional cultural materials in a respectful and responsible way.
 

Caption: Assistant Professor Wen De-lan of the Department of Information Management of Taoyuan Innovation Institute of Technology  shared “Every step amazing-Program results and rights inventory.”

It has been said that “ cultural relics have a soul”because of the spirit that cultural relics exude in the process of being created, collected, relocated and used;an  intellectual property rights inventory is like stripping away the layers of a cultural relic’s soul one by one, from different angles seeing the cultural relic intellectual property rights situation; although the process is complex and needs to strike a balance between development and guarantee, it allows culture to be joined with creativity and opportunities and potential to develop industry found.