Bücher der Reihe Cambridge Intellectual Property and Information Law

The professional media enjoys greater protection than private individuals when preparing or publishing speech. The best-known example is the right of journalists to keep their sources confidential. Jan Oster explores whether these privileges are still justified, and how 'journalists' are actually to be defined in the internet age.

Copyright must evolve to support the opportunities and demands of the digital age, while balancing the interests of authors, owners, intermediaries and users of all types (including libraries, researchers and creators). This book contributes to the copyright debate and provides pathways for a structured policy discussion on copyright reform.

Our privacy on the internet is under threat from businesses such as Facebook and Google, government agencies such as the NSA and GCHQ, criminals and others. Internet Privacy Rights suggests a way to address these threats, using case studies and analysis to put together a coherent, rights-based way forward.

After colonization, indigenous people faced an extractive property rights regime for both their land and knowledge. This book outlines that regime, how international intellectual property continues today to assist states to enclose indigenous peoples' knowledge and the networked response of indigenous people to this enclosure.

Adopting a comparative approach, this collection provides an overview of developments in privacy law such as the reform of data protection frameworks, privacy and the media, surveillance and social control, privacy and the Internet, and privacy and the courts.

Intellectual Property at the Edge provides a basis for the study of newly emerging intellectual property rights and defences, their history and their impact on creativity. It examines these developments comparatively: for each new development, scholars in two jurisdictions trace the evolution of the new legal norm.

Combining a theoretical perspective with in-depth empirical studies, Sebastian Haunss discusses how conflicts over intellectual property issues such as access to medicines, the emergence of Pirate Parties and the creation of Creative Commons are linked to more general social conflicts in the knowledge society.

The protection of privacy and personality is one of the most fascinating issues confronting any legal system. This book provides a detailed comparative analysis of the laws relating to commercial exploitation of personality in France, Germany, the United Kingdom and the United States. It examines the difficulties in reconciling privacy and personality with intellectual property rights in an individual's identity and in balancing such rights with the competing interests of freedom of expression and freedom of competition. This analysis will be useful for lawyers in legal systems which have yet to develop a sophisticated level of protection for interests in personality. Equally, lawyers in systems which provide a higher level of protection will benefit from the comparative insights into determining the nature and scope of intellectual property rights in personality, particularly questions relating to assignment, licensing, and post-mortem protection.

Exclusions from Patentability reviews the history of the adoption of exclusions from patentability under the European Patent Convention since its first conception in 1949 through to its most recent revision. The analysis shows how other intellectual property treaties, such as UPOV, the Strasbourg Patent Convention, PCT, the EU Biotech Directive and TRIPS have affected the framing of the exclusions. Particular attention is given to those exclusions considered the most contentious (computer programmes, discoveries, medical treatments, life forms and agriculture) and those decisions which have been most influential in shaping the approaches by which the exclusions have been interpreted. The 'morality' exclusion and the interpretation of the exclusions are discussed critically and suggestions for coherent interpretation are made.

Small market economies provide a unique insight into balancing competing interests in global intellectual property. As developed countries and net-importers of intellectual property, such economies can have similar concerns to some developing countries. Susy Frankel uses examples drawn from small market economies to explore global intellectual property issues.

Are intellectual property rights a threat to autonomy, global justice, indigenous rights, access to lifesaving knowledge and medicines? The essays in this volume examine the justification of patents, copyrights and trademarks in light of the political and moral controversy over TRIPS (the Agreement on Trade-Related Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights).

Vigorous public debate about intellectual property has a long history. In this assessment of the shifting relationships between the law and the economic, social and cultural sources of creativity and innovation during the long-nineteenth century, Megan Richardson and Julian Thomas examine the 'fashioning' of the law by focusing on emblematic cases, key legislative changes and broader debates. Along the way, the authors highlight how, in 'the age of journalism', the press shaped, and was shaped by, the idea of intellectual property as a protective crucible for improvements in knowledge and progress in the arts and sciences. The engagement in our own time between intellectual property and the creative industries remains volatile and unsettled. As the authors conclude, the fresh opportunities for artistic diversity, expression and communication offered by new media could see the place of intellectual property in the scheme of law being reinvented once again.

There is huge variation in the nature, scope and institutional forms of legal protection for valuable geographical brands such as Champagne, Colombian coffee and Darjeeling tea. Adopting a historical approach, Dev Gangjee investigates the extent to which these brands are protected by international intellectual property law.

Aimed at students, scholars, legal professionals and policy-makers dedicated to intellectual property issues, this book aims to solve potential conflicts between intellectual property rights, human rights and free competition through the adoption of legislative and judicial exceptions to intellectual property rights.

Efforts to expand the scope of legal protection given to reputation and brands in the Asia Pacific region have led to considerable controversy. Written by a variety of experts, the essays in this book consider the developing law of reputation and brands in a fraught area.

Davison examines several legal models designed to protect databases, considering in particular the EU Directive, the history of its adoption and its transposition into national laws. As well as comparing the Directive with a range of American legislative proposals, he comments on various models in the context of an international agreement.

An examination of the nature and function of trade marks and brands, and the scope of their legal protection. Linguists, anthropologists, sociologists, business historians and philosophers provide their views on brands, and their legal counterparts explore the implications of their insights for trade mark law.

Concepts of Property in Intellectual Property Law explores the interaction between notions of property in law and particular aspects of intellectual property law. It considers how different understandings of property in the law of copyright, patent and trade marks lead to different outcomes in the scope of legal protection.

Alongside that of lawyers, an understanding of the changing nature of copyright infringement requires the inputs of economists, historians, technologists, sociologists, cultural theorists and criminologists. In this examination of the topic, specialists in such disciplines offer their appraisals, and a lawyer provides a commentary on each.

The relationships between international intellectual property treaties, the United Nations international environmental treaties (first and foremost the Convention on Biological Diversity), the relevant customary norms and soft law form a complex network of obligations that sometimes conflict with each other. The first set of treaties creates private rights while the latter affirms the sovereignty rights of States over genetic resources and related knowledge and creates international regimes of exploitation of the same. Jonathan Curci proposes solutions to the conflicts between treaties through the concept of 'mutual supportiveness', including the construction of a national-access and benefit-sharing regime, mandatory contractual provisions in relevant international contracts, a defensive protection when genetic resource-related traditional knowledge is unjustly patented through the analysis of the concepts of 'ordre public and morality', 'certificate of origin' in the patent application and 'novelty-destroying prior art' and positive protection through existing and sui generis intellectual property rights and misappropriation regimes.

The cost of patent licenses needed to design a new genetic test or treatment may ultimately prevent research projects getting started, as individual components are protected by different patent owners. This book examines legal measures which might be used to solve the problem of fragmentation of patents in genetics.

A comprehensive account of the internationalisation of literary copyright, focusing on nineteenth century international copyright law as it affected Europe, the British colonies (particularly Canada), America, and the UK. Explores the history of international copyright law, and looks at how this history is relevant today.

By repackaging software as a 'device', patent attorneys have succeeded in getting protection for their clients. This text argues that this approach by the Patent Offices makes it difficult for competitors to assess what has been protected. If software is being protected, it should be examined and assessed as such.

An examination of the nature and function of trade marks and brands, and the scope of their legal protection. Linguists, anthropologists, sociologists, business historians and philosophers provide their views on brands, and their legal counterparts explore the implications of their insights for trade mark law.

This book was first published in 2005. Copyright 'exceptions' or 'users' rights' have become a highly controversial aspect of copyright law. Most recently, Member States of the European Union have been forced to amend their systems of exceptions so as to comply with the Information Society Directive. Taking the newly amended UK legislation as a case study, this book examines why copyright exceptions are necessary and the forces that have shaped the present legislative regime in the UK. It seeks to further our understanding of the exceptions by combining detailed doctrinal analysis with insights gained from a range of other sources. The principal argument of the book is that the UK's current system of 'permitted acts' is much too restrictive and hence is in urgent need of reform, but that paradoxically the Information Society Directive points the way towards a much more satisfactory approach.

Although multimedia products are highly successful, they are inadequately protected by existing copyright schemes. Stamatoudi considers existing legislation, and chapters treat topics including databases, audiovisual works and computer programs; finally, she offers a model for a European legislative solution. This will interest academics, students, practitioners and copyright policy makers.

Beverley-Smith provides analyses of the disparate aspects of commercial appropriation of personality and traces, in detail, the discrete patterns of development in the major common law systems. He also considers whether a coherent justification for a remedy may be identified from a range of competing theories.

This book is the first detailed historical account of why intellectual property law with its sub-categories of patents, copyright, designs and trade marks took the shape that it did over the course of the nineteenth century. The authors also discuss ways in which the law grants property status to intangibles.

The first in-depth study of the history of copyright protecting the visual arts, uncovering long-forgotten narratives of copyright history and reflecting on how those sharpen the critical lens through which we view copyright today. It will appeal to copyright lawyers, scholars and policy-makers, as well as to art historians and curators.