This Handbook brings together scholars from around the world in addressing the global significance of, controversies over and alternatives to intellectual property (IP) today. It brings together over fifty of the leading authors in this field across the spectrum of academic disciplines, from law, economics, geography, sociology, politics and anthropology.

This volume addresses the full spectrum of IP issues including copyright, patent, trademarks and trade secrets, as well as parallel rights and novel applications. In addition to addressing the role of IP in an increasingly...

Formally, ownership of ideas is legally impossible, and can never be globally secured. Yet, in very real and significant ways these limits have been undone. In principle, ideas cannot be owned, yet, undoing the distinction between ideas and tangible manifestations, the distinction which underpins the principle, allows the principle to hold even whilst its meaning is hollowed out.

Post-Cold War global network capitalism is premised upon regulatory structures designed to enforce deregulation in global markets and production, but at the same time to enforce global...