Management of intellectual property and, in particular, copyright is one of the most challenging issues in an increasingly digital world. The rise of the open access (OA) movement provides a new model for managing intellectual property in educational and research environments. OA aims to promote greater and more efficient access to educational and research materials and has an international profile. This article overviews the basic charter of OA and explain how it proposes to transform academic communication and publishing in an online world. Importantly, this article also overviews the legal issues that surround the move towards OA and the concept of open content licensing (including the Creative Commons Project). (Contains 45 notes.)