This book explores how dissimilar patent systems remain distinctive despite international efforts towards harmonization. The dominant historical account describes harmonization as ever-growing, with familiar milestones such as the Paris Convention (1883), the World Intellectual Property Organization's founding (1967), and the formation of current global institutions of patent governance. Yet throughout the modern period, countries fashioned their own mechanisms for fostering technological invention. Notwithstanding the harmonization project, diversity in patent cultures remains stubbornly...

The nature and content of intellectual property (IP) law, which is heavily contingent on the state of technology and on social and market developments, has always been subject to ongoing transitions. How those transitions are effected and the shape they take is crucial to the ability of IP to achieve its stated goals and provide the necessary climate for investment in creativity, innovation and brand differentiation. Yet the need for change can run headlong into a desire for coherence. A search for coherence tests the limits of the concept of “intellectual property,” is imperiled by...

Adventures in Childhood connects modern intellectual property law and practice with a history of consumption. Structured in a loosely chronological order, the book begins with the creation of a children's literature market, a Christmas market, and moves through character merchandising, syndicated newspaper strips, film, television, and cross-industry relations, finishing in the 1970s, by which time professional identities and legal practices had stabilized. By focusing on the rise of child-targeted commercial activities, the book is able to reflect on how and why intellectual property rights...