Our Intellectual Property Legal Clinic provides pro bono consultations for independent artists and creative collectives with the help of law students. Come with your case and we will advise you on how to protect your work and what resources you can freely use. Students will prepare your case and provide advice under the supervision of practicing attorneys, industrial property lawyers and professors from top Bulgarian universities.

The concept of providing free and open to the public legal advice from students is known as a “legal clinic” and is implemented under the auspices of many universities and NGOs around the world.

Our aim is to support independent authors in the realisation of their projects and to encourage the use of open licenses in the publication of works. With our clinic we want to create a community of authors who know their rights and the values of free sharing.

Consultations are free of charge. What we ask from participants in return is to make a small contribution to open access resources i.e., to release some of their new or existing work under a Creative Commons license.

To sign up for a consultation, please fill out this preliminary form with brief information about yourself and your case. If you are a student who would like to join the initiative, please send us your information and a brief motivation here. We will contact you once we receive the form.

Digital Republic reserves the right to choose which cases to take on and which clients to provide advice to. The main criteria for the selection of cases and workshop participants are: the degree of complexity and the nature of the solution sought, the workload of the students and their trainers, whether the clients are independent creators, representative organisations or companies.