Derived from the renowned multi-volume International Encyclopaedia of Laws, this monograph provides a survey and analysis of the rules concerning intellectual property rights in the Switzerland. It covers every type of intellectual property right in depth – copyright and neighbouring rights, patents, utility models, trademarks, trade names, industrial designs, plant variety protection, chip protection, trade secrets, and confidential information. Particular attention is paid throughout to recent developments and trends. The analysis approaches each right in terms of its sources in law and in legislation, and proceeds to such legal issues as subject matter of protection, conditions of protection, ownership, transfer of rights, licences, scope of exclusive rights, limitations, exemptions, duration of protection, infringement, available remedies, and overlapping with other intellectual property rights. The book provides a clear overview of intellectual property legislation and policy, and at the same time offers practical guidance on which sound preliminary decisions may be based. Lawyers representing parties with interests in the Switzerland will welcome this very useful guide, and academics and researchers will appreciate its value in the study of comparative intellectual property law.

In today’s knowledge-based global economy, most inventions are made by employed persons through their employers’ research and development activities. However, methods of establishing rights over an employee’s intellectual property assets are relatively uncertain in the absence of international solutions. Given that increasingly more businesses establish entities in different countries and more employees co-operate across borders, it becomes essential for companies to be able to establish the conditions under which ownership subsists in intellectual property created in employment relationships in various countries. This comparative law publication describes and analyses employers’ acquisition of employees’ intellectual property rights, first in general and then in depth. This second edition of the book considers thirty-four different jurisdictions worldwide. The book was developed within the framework of the International Association for the Protection of Intellectual Property (AIPPI), a non-affiliated, non-profit organization dedicated to improving and promoting the protection of intellectual property at both national and international levels. Among the issues and topics covered by the forty-nine distinguished contributors are the following: • different approaches in different law systems; • choice of law for contracts; • harmonizing international jurisdiction rules; • conditions for recognition and enforcement of foreign judgments; • employees’ rights in copyright, semiconductor chips, inventions, designs, plant varieties and utility models on a country-by-country basis; • employee remuneration right; • parties’ duty to inform; and • instances for disputes. With its wealth of information on an increasingly important subject for practitioners in every jurisdiction, this book is sure to be put to constant use by corporate lawyers and in-house counsel everywhere. It is also exceptionally valuable as a thorough resource for academics and researchers interested in the international harmonization of intellectual property law.

This booklet provides an introduction for newcomers to the subject of industrial property. It explains the principles underpinning industrial property rights, and describes the most common forms of industrial property, including patents and utility models for inventions, industrial designs, trademarks and geographical indications.

This booklet provides an introduction for newcomers to the subject of copyright and related rights. It explains the fundamentals underpinning copyright law and practice, and describes the different types of rights which copyright and related rights law protects, as well as the limitations on those rights. It also briefly covers transfer of copyright and provisions for enforcement.

Intellectual property law is built on constitutional foundations and is underpinned by the twin freedoms of freedom of expression and freedom of economic enterprise. In this thoughtful evaluation, Gustavo Ghidini offers up a reconstruction of the core features of each intellectual property paradigm, including patents, copyright, and trademarks, suggesting measures for reform to allow intellectual property to become socially beneficial for all.

This fully updated book offers a compact and accessible account of EU intellectual property (IP) law and policy. The digital age brings many opportunities, but also presents continuing challenges to IP law as the EU’s programme of harmonisation unfolds. As well as addressing the main IP rights (copyright, patents, designs, trade marks and related rights), the book also considers IP’s relationship with the EU’s rules on free movement of goods and competition, as well as examining the enforcement of IP rights. Taking account of numerous changes, this timely second edition covers the substantive provisions and procedures which apply throughout the EU, making extensive reference to the case law. The author considers how the exploitation of IP is increasingly global; harmonisation, in contrast, is only partial, even at the EU level. In response, the book sets EU IP law in its wider international context. It also seeks to highlight policy issues and arguments of relevance to the EU, in its relations both within the Union and with the rest of the world. Designed as a compact and approachable account of these difficult and technical areas, and with advice on further reading and research, this unique book is useful both as a work of reference and for more general study. It is essential reading for postgraduate students, academic researchers and legal practitioners alike.

This book takes a fresh look at the most dynamic area of American law today, comprising the fields of copyright, patent, trademark, trade secrecy, publicity rights, and misappropriation. Topics range from copyright in private letters to defensive patenting of business methods, from moral rights in the visual arts to the banking of trademarks, from the impact of the court of patent appeals to the management of Mickey Mouse. The history and political science of intellectual property law, the challenge of digitization, the many statutes and judge-made doctrines, and the interplay with antitrust principles are all examined. The treatment is both positive (oriented toward understanding the law as it is) and normative (oriented to the reform of the law). Previous analyses have tended to overlook the paradox that expanding intellectual property rights can effectively reduce the amount of new intellectual property by raising the creators' input costs. Those analyses have also failed to integrate the fields of intellectual property law. They have failed as well to integrate intellectual property law with the law of physical property, overlooking the many economic and legal-doctrinal parallels. This book demonstrates the fundamental economic rationality of intellectual property law, but is sympathetic to critics who believe that in recent decades Congress and the courts have gone too far in the creation and protection of intellectual property rights. Table of Contents: Introduction 1. The Economic Theory of Property 2. How to Think about Copyright 3. A Formal Model of Copyright 4. Basic Copyright Doctrines 5. Copyright in Unpublished Works 6. Fair Use, Parody, and Burlesque 7. The Economics of Trademark Law 8. The Optimal Duration of Copyrights and Trademarks 9. The Legal Protection of Postmodern Art 10. Moral Rights and the Visual Artists Rights Act 11. The Economics of Patent Law 12. The Patent Court: A Statistical Evaluation 13. The Economics of Trade Secrecy Law 14. Antitrust and Intellectual Property 15. The Political Economy of Intellectual Property Law Conclusion Acknowledgments Index Reviews of this book: Chicago law professor William Landes and his polymath colleague Richard Posner have produced a fascinating new book...[The Economic Structure of Intellectual Property Law] is a broad-ranging analysis of how intellectual property should and does work...Shakespeare's copying from Plutarch, Microsoft's incentives to hide the source code for Windows, and Andy Warhol's right to copyright a Brillo pad box as art are all analyzed, as is the question of the status of the all-bran cereal called 'All-Bran.' --Nicholas Thompson, New York Sun Reviews of this book: Landes and Posner, each widely respected in the intersection of law and economics, investigate the right mix of protection and use of intellectual property (IP)...This volume provides a broad and coherent approach to the economics and law of IP. The economics is important, understandable, and valuable. --R. A. Miller, Choice Intellectual property is the most important public policy issue that most policymakers don't yet get. It is America's most important export, and affects an increasingly wide range of social and economic life. In this extraordinary work, two of America's leading scholars in the law and economics movement test the pretensions of intellectual property law against the rationality of economics. Their conclusions will surprise advocates from both sides of this increasingly contentious debate. Their analysis will help move the debate beyond the simplistic ideas that now tend to dominate. --Lawrence Lessig, Stanford Law School, author of The Future of Ideas: The Fate of the Commons in a Connected World An image from modern mythology depicts the day that Einstein, pondering a blackboard covered with sophisticated calculations, came to the life-defining discovery: Time = $$. Landes and Posner, in the role of that mythological Einstein, reveal at every turn how perceptions of economic efficiency pervade legal doctrine. This is a fascinating and resourceful book. Every page reveals fresh, provocative, and surprising insights into the forces that shape law. --Pierre N. Leval, Judge, U.S. Court of Appeals, Second Circuit The most important book ever written on intellectual property. --William Patry, former copyright counsel to the U.S. House of Representatives, Judiciary Committee Given the immense and growing importance of intellectual property to modern economies, this book should be welcomed, even devoured, by readers who want to understand how the legal system affects the development, protection, use, and profitability of this peculiar form of property. The book is the first to view the whole landscape of the law of intellectual property from a functionalist (economic) perspective. Its examination of the principles and doctrines of patent law, copyright law, trade secret law, and trademark law is unique in scope, highly accessible, and altogether greatly rewarding. --Steven Shavell, Harvard Law School, author of Foundations of Economic Analysis of Law