The fields of intellectual property have broadened and deepened in so many ways that commentators struggle to keep up with the ceaseless rush of developments and hot topics. Kritika: Essays on Intellectual Property is a series that is designed to help authors escape this rush. It creates a forum for authors who wish to more deeply question, investigate and reflect upon the evolving themes and principles of the discipline. This second volume of Kritika again brings together leading scholars from different fields and disciplines, who in their essays offer reflections on the topics of cognitive dissonance in the economics of patent protection; how innovation flourishes in China's 'fertile land of intellectual property piracy'; determining the legitimate enclosure of IP exclusivity; the revival of the essential facilities doctrine as a result of patents blocking access to standards; disciplining cumulative protection of the design of mass products; trademark law's reluctance to recognize a sign's degeneration into a common product designation; geographies of taste, fashion and tradition; and on the risk of ever-increasing intellectual property protection backfiring on its zealous promoters. With contributions from: Giuseppe Colangelo; Vincenzo Di Cataldo; Susy Frankel; Johanna Gibson; Keith E. Maskus; Roberto Pardolesi; Thomas Riis; Jens Schovsbo; Ken Shao and Michel Vivant

The fields of intellectual property have broadened and deepened in so many ways that commentators struggle to keep up with the ceaseless rush of developments and hot topics. Kritika: Essays on Intellectual Property is a series that is designed to help authors escape this rush. It creates a forum for authors who wish to more deeply question, investigate and reflect upon the evolving themes and principles of the discipline. This third volume of Kritika again brings together leading scholars from different fields and disciplines. Their essays reflect on some of the big problems in the field, addressing issues such as the way that institutions like WIPO continue with their propertization missions, how the bells of lobbyists toll incessantly for new data rights, and the ways in which discourses of human rights and information justice struggle to turn intellectual property from an instrument of private accumulation into one of service for the common good. Important questions in the field are also tackled; for example, how does the Islamic view of knowledge as life cohere with intellectual property, at a time when, as other essays show, intellectual property grounds new forms of state imperium? With contributions from: Sara Bannerman; Shamnad Basheer; Rahul Bajaj; Mohammed El Said; Blayne Haggart; Thomas Hoeren; P. Bernt Hugenholtz and Fiona Macmillan

The fields of intellectual property have broadened and deepened in so many ways that commentators struggle to keep up with the ceaseless rush of developments and hot topics. Kritika: Essays on Intellectual Property is a series that is designed to help authors escape this rush. It creates a forum for authors who wish to more deeply question, investigate and reflect upon the evolving themes and principles of the discipline. With a view to setting in train a process of emergent critical scholarship, this inaugural volume of Kritika brings together leading scholars from the different fields of the discipline, reflecting on the private regulatory power of patents; the role of competition law in the search for the holy grail of balance in IP; the fictions of patent law; the anthropological relativism of IP; the historical transmission processes behind the IP concept; the vanishing paradigm of exclusivity in a digital environment; models of inclusive patents serving open innovation; and the rhetoric behind the copyright ratchet.

With contributions from leading scholars from all over Europe and the US, this book covers the major areas of substantive competition law from an evolutionary perspective. The leitmotiv of the book has been to assess the dividing line between safeguarding and regulating competition, which it does by reviewing the following subjects: * foundations of competition policy in the EU and the US * strategic competition policy * the evolution of European competition law from a national (Italian) perspective * the block exemption of vertical agreements after four years * the new Technology Transfer Block Exemption * cooperative networking * mergers in the media sector * abuse of market power * concepts of competition in sector specific regulation * competition, regulation and systems coherence * efficiency claims in EU competition law and sector specific regulation. The Evolution of European Competition Law will be of great interest to lawyers, economists, academics, judges and public officials working in the fields of competition law and policy.

This book examines the impact and shortcomings of the TRIPS Agreement, which was signed in Marrakesh on 15 April 1994. Over the last 20 years, the framework conditions have changed fundamentally. New technologies have emerged, markets have expanded beyond national borders, some developing states have become global players, the terms of international competition have changed, and the intellectual property system faces increasing friction with public policies. The contributions to this book inquire into whether the TRIPS Agreement should still be seen only as part of an international trade regulation, or whether it needs to be understood - or even reconceptualized - as a framework regulation for the international protection of intellectual property. The purpose, therefore, is not to define the terms of an outright revision of the TRIPS Agreement but rather to discuss the framework conditions for an interpretative evolution that could make the Agreement better suited to the expectations and needs of today's global economy.

The main objective of the contributions to this book is to bring together two seemingly different strands of thought: the competition-law analysis of the exercise of intellectual property, and the discussion about the proper limits of protection, which at present takes place inside the intellectual property community. Both are burdened with their own problems, particularly so in Europe, where market integration and the divide between exclusionary and exploitative abuses ask for a more dimensional approach, and where the shaping of intellectual property protection is under not only the influence of many interests and policies, but a multi-level exercise of the Community and its member states. The question is whether, nevertheless, there is a common concern, or whether the frequently asserted convergence of the operation and of the goals of competition law and intellectual property law does not mask a fundamental difference - namely that of, on the one hand, protecting freedom of competition against welfare-reducing restrictions of competition only, and, on the other, limiting the protection of exclusive rights in the (public) interest of maintaining free access to general knowledge. The purpose of the workshop held in 2007 at the College of Europe, Bruges, and whose results are published here, was to ask which role market power plays in either context, which role it may legitimately play, and which role it ought not to play. A tentative answer might be found in the general principle that, just as intellectual property does not enjoy a particular status under competition law, so competition law may not come as a white knight to rescue intellectual property protection from itself. However, the meaning of that principle differs according to both the context of the acquisition and the exploitation of intellectual property, and it differs from one area of intellectual property to the other. Therefore, an attempt has also been made to cover more facets of the prism-like complex of problems than is generally done.

The rising importance and continuous expansion of intellectual property protection quite naturally goes together with increasing concern about the legal and political foundations of such enhanced protection. Nowhere does the basic equation which underlies intellectual property, namely that the pursuit of short term private interest by the holders of such property will satisfy the public interest in the long term, become both more visible, but also questionable than at the crossroads between the grant and enforcement of exclusive rights with international trade. Catchphrases, such as patent protection and access to essential medicines, or access to genetic resources, benefit sharing and economic development, stand for fundamental tensions and conflicts between private property and the public interest. This book presents the contributions that have been made on these and related topics by a group of internationally renowned experts at a workshop held at the College of Europe, Bruges.

This book examines the impact and shortcomings of the TRIPS Agreement, which was signed in Marrakesh on 15 April 1994. Over the last 20 years, the framework conditions have changed fundamentally. New technologies have emerged, markets have expanded beyond national borders, some developing states have become global players, the terms of international competition have changed, and the intellectual property system faces increasing friction with public policies. The contributions to this book inquire into whether the TRIPS Agreement should still be seen only as part of an international trade regulation, or whether it needs to be understood - or even reconceptualized - as a framework regulation for the international protection of intellectual property. The purpose, therefore, is not to define the terms of an outright revision of the TRIPS Agreement but rather to discuss the framework conditions for an interpretative evolution that could make the Agreement better suited to the expectations and needs of today's global economy.