The book describes how intellectual property law is framed by theories about incentives, trade, health, development, and human rights.

One of the common themes in recent public debate has been the law's inability to accommodate the new ways of creating, distributing and replicating intellectual products. In this book the authors argue that in order to understand many of the problems currently confronting the law, it is necessary to understand its past. This is its first detailed historical account. In this book the authors explore two related themes. First, they explain why intellectual property law came to take its now familiar shape with sub-categories of patents, copyright, designs and trade marks. Secondly, the authors set out to explain how it is that the law grants property status to intangibles. In doing so they explore the rise and fall of creativity as an organising concept in intellectual property law, the mimetic nature of intellectual property law and the important role that the registration process plays in shaping intangible property.

Massive quantities of information are required to fuel the innovation process in a knowledge-based economy; a requirement that is in tension with intellectual property (IP) laws. Against this backdrop, leading thinkers in the IP arena explore the Šacce

This book presents a critical examination of the policy space in international intellectual property law through the unique lens of glocalisation. It further highlights the role that the WTO’s adjudicatory bodies play in preserving this space in international IP law.

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 overlaps between different IP regimes, and calls for a unifying normative theme. This volume assembles contributors from across IP and the globe to explore these questions, including whether coherence is desirable. It should be read by anyone interested in understanding the conceptual underpinnings of one of the most important and dynamic areas of the law.

Two of the objectives of the Chinese Copyright Law are to protect the copyright of authors to their literary and artistic works and encourage the creation and dissemination of works. In practice, however, in spite of the existence of the Music Copyright Society of China ('MCSC') that was established to assist with exercising copyright, music creators in China remain in need of help to protect and manage their fragmented copyright. The MCSC was the first collective management organisation ('CMO') in mainland China and is the only CMO in the field of musical works. While there is a large music industry and copyright business in China, the MCSC only had 11,356 members at the end of 2021. The third amendment of the Chinese Copyright Law was initiated in 2011 and came into effect in June 2021 after a long debate for almost ten years. The discussion of the third amendment has highlighted the controversial topic of collective management of copyright. This book explores the adequacy of the MCSC as an intermediary representing rights for music creators. The main argument developed in this study is that the work of the MCSC for individual composers and lyricists is hampered by shortcomings in the regulatory regime as well as by a lack of members’ rights to participate in the management of their own rights and by the ineffective international cooperation between the MCSC and other musical CMOs overseas. The analysis is undertaken through a case study approach, comparing the collective management systems of music copyright in China, the United States and Australia and addressing the question of how musical CMOs operate in these countries. Specifically, three perspectives are examined: the regulatory systems designed to limit the misuse of those CMOs’ monopoly, members’ rights in the organisations, and international cooperation between these CMOs. Overall, the main findings of this book suggest that the MCSC in China could work more effectively to protect music creators’ interests. In contrast, although the operational frameworks of the American Society of Composers, Authors and Publishers ('ASCAP') and the Broadcasting Broadcast Music, Inc. ('BMI') in the United States and the Australasian Performing Right Association ('APRA') in Australia are not perfect models, the systems in these two countries may at least provide reference points for potential improvement of the regime of the MCSC. The research recommends three courses of action: strengthening the regulatory design overseeing the MCSC’s monopoly, clarifying the relationship between the MCSC and its members while providing the members with the right to manage their own copyright, and improving the international cooperation between the MCSC and CMOs in other countries.