The computer program exclusion from Article 52 of the European Patent Convention (EPC) proved impossible to uphold as industry moved over to digital technology, and the Boards of Appeal of the European Patent Organisation (EPO) felt emboldened to circumvent the EPC in Vicom by creating the legal fiction of 'technical effect'. This 'engineer's solution' emphasised that protection should be available for a device, a situation which has led to software and business methods being protected throughout Europe when the form of application, rather than the substance, is acceptable. Since the Article...

Commercial exploitation of attributes of an individual's personality (name, voice and likeness) is characteristic of modern advertising and marketing. This volume provides a framework for analyzing the disparate aspects of the commercial appropriation of personality and traces its discrete patterns in the major common law systems. It considers whether a coherent justification for a remedy may be identified from a range of competing theories.

Developments in trade marks law have called into question a variety of basic features, as well as bolder extensions, of legal protection. Other disciplines can help us think about fundamental issues such as: what is a trade mark? What does it do? What should be the scope of its protection? This volume assembles essays examining trade marks and brands from a multiplicity of fields: from business history, marketing, linguistics, legal history, philosophy, sociology and geography. Each chapter pairs lawyers' and non-lawyers' perspectives, so that each commentator addresses and critiques his or...

This book is the first detailed historical account of intellectual property law. In part, it examines why intellectual property law with its subcategories of patents, copyright, designs and trade marks took the shape that it did over the course of the nineteenth century. In addition the authors deal with ways in which the law grants property status to intangibles and describe how the law came to create techniques that enabled it to recognize protectable intangibles, and the inescapable problems that have arisen from their use.

Concerns have been expressed that gene patents might result in restricted access to research and health care. The exponential growth of patents claiming human DNA sequences might result in patent thickets, royalty stacking and, ultimately, a 'tragedy of the anti-commons' in genetics. The essays in this book explore models designed to render patented genetic inventions accessible for further use in research, diagnosis or treatment. The models include patent pools, clearing house mechanisms, open source structures and liability regimes. They are analysed by scholars and practitioners in...

Technological developments have shaped copyright law's development, and now the prospect of endless, effortless digital copying poses a significant challenge to modern copyright law. Many complain that copyright protection has burgeoned wildly, far beyond its original boundaries. Some have questioned whether copyright can survive the digital age. From a historical perspective, however, many of these 'new' challenges are simply fresh presentations of familiar dilemmas. This book explores the history of international copyright law, and looks at how this history is relevant today. It focuses on...

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...

Copyright has been the subject of interdisciplinary inquiry, but generally from the perspective of authorship'. This volume takes a different tack, examining the concept of infringement and its cousins, imitation and inspiration, from a variety of approaches. Rather than proposing a litany of discrete chapters each independently covering a different discipline, the Editors have planned each chapter to pair lawyers' and non lawyers' perspectives, so that each commentator addresses and critiques his or her counterpart's analysis."

Developments in trade marks law have called into question a variety of basic features, as well as bolder extensions, of legal protection. Other disciplines can help us think about fundamental issues such as: what is a trade mark? What does it do? What should be the scope of its protection? This volume assembles essays examining trade marks and brands from a multiplicity of fields: from business history, marketing, linguistics, legal history, philosophy, sociology and geography. Each chapter pairs lawyers' and non-lawyers' perspectives, so that each commentator addresses and critiques his or...

The computer program exclusion from Article 52 of the European Patent Convention (EPC) proved impossible to uphold as industry moved over to digital technology, and the Boards of Appeal of the European Patent Organisation (EPO) felt emboldened to circumvent the EPC in Vicom by creating the legal fiction of 'technical effect'. This 'engineer's solution' emphasised that protection should be available for a device, a situation which has led to software and business methods being protected throughout Europe when the form of application, rather than the substance, is acceptable. Since the Article...