Reforming Intellectual Property brings together 19 of the world’s leading scholars in the field to offer their unique insight into the future of intellectual property. Providing a diverse array of perspectives on the most pressing reforms needed in the current IP regime, whether in terms of legislation at national and international levels, or interpretation of existing law, this exceptional book highlights the key issues in this area and sets out an agenda for future research and policy.

This forward-looking book examines the issue of intellectual property (IP) law reform, considering both the reform of primary IP rights, and the impact of secondary rights on such reforms. It reflects on the distinction between primary and secondary rights, offering new international perspectives on IP reform, and exploring both the intended and unintended consequences of changing primary rights or adding secondary rights.

Intellectual Property law (IP) - particularly in relation to international trade regimes - is increasingly finding itself challenged by rapid developments in the technological and global economic landscapes. In its attempt to maintain a responsive legislative system that is interacting successfully with global trade rules, IP is having to respond to an increasing number of actors on an international level. This book examines the problems associated with this undertaking as well as suggesting possible revisions to the TRIPS agreement that would make it more relevant to the environment in which today's IP mechanisms are operating. The overall aim is to find an adequate response to the 'IP balance dilemma'. The theme is pursued throughout various topics, including a look at what this means in relation to economy in a country like China, and also considering how IP is increasingly having to reconcile itself with human rights issues.

This state-of-the-art study argues that reforms to intellectual property (IP) should be based on the ways IP is interacting with new technologies, business models, work patterns and social mores. It identifies emerging IP reform proposals and experiments, indicating first how more rigor and independence can be built into the grant of IP rights so that genuine innovations are recognized. The original contributions illustrate how IP rights can be utilised, through open source licensing systems and private transfers, to disseminate knowledge. Reforms are recommended. The discussion takes in patents, copyright, trade secrets and relational obligations, considering the design of legislative directives, default principles, administrative practices, contractual terms and license specifications. Providing contemporary empirical studies and covering public administration, collective and open approaches, and regulation of private transactions, this comprehensive book will prove a stimulating read for academics and students of law, business and management and development studies. Government policy makers and regulators as well as IP managers and advocates will also find much to provoke thought.

In recent years, intellectual property-based industries have become more critical to the world's economies. However, where most of the writing on the economics of intellectual property protection policy has been speculative, this book offers a testable economic theory. The theory of 'natural intellectual property protection reform' analyses how economic development influences IPR policy and in turn, how IPR reform affects innovation.Empirical support for the theory, and a case study based on data gathered from Singapore's software developers, are included. The book should be of interest to economists, and those who form economic policy, are in the information industries or follow Singapore's economic development.

Across the world, developing countries are attempting to balance the international standards of intellectual property concerning pharmaceutical patents against the urgent need for accessible and affordable medicines. In this timely and necessary book, Monirul Azam examines the attempts of several developing countries to walk this fine line. He evaluates the experiences of Brazil, China, India, and South Africa for lessons to guide Bangladesh and developing nations everywhere. Azam's legal expertise, concern for public welfare, and compelling grasp of principal case studies make Intellectual Property and Public Health in the Developing World a definitive work. The developing world is striving to meet the requirements of the World Trade Organization's TRIPS Agreement on intellectual property. This book sets out with lucidity and insight the background of the TRIPS Agreement and its implications for pharmaceutical patents, the consequences for developing countries, and the efforts of certain representative nations to comply with international stipulations while still maintaining local industry and public health. Azam then brings the weight of this research to bear on the particular case of Bangladesh, offering a number of specific policy recommendations for the Bangladeshi government—and for governments the world over. Intellectual Property and Public Health in the Developing World is a must-read for public policy-makers, academics and students, non-governmental organizations, and readers everywhere who are interested in making sure that developing nations meet the health care needs of their people.

The book ends with a comprehensive selection of the relevant bibliography. This part is all the more valuable to the reader as Ghidini does not simply list the relevant literature but puts it in it general context and comments on it. Ghidini s book is a fascinating trip through the system of IP laws. Beatriz Conde Gallego, Intellectual Property and Competition Law Intellectual Property and Competition Law by Gustavo Ghidini provides a persuasively presented descriptive analysis of a distinctively European perspective on intellectual property law and its relationship to competition law. Professor Ghidini expertly presents the evolution of intellectual property laws and its contemporary manifestations with respect to the expansion copyright law in technological fields and the inevitability conflict with patent law, the attempt at creating monopolies (such as in biotechnology), and so much more. A seminal work of impressive and articulate scholarship, Intellectual Property and Competition Law should be considered mandatory reading for students and researchers in the field of intellectual property rights and a very strongly recommended addition to academic library International Economics and Judicial Studies reference collections. The Economics Shelf, Midwest Book Review . . . the provocative nature of this book is one of its great strengths, as are its cohesiveness and erudition. Mel Marquis, European Competition Law Review We in the United States have much to learn not only from Gustavo Ghidini s careful analysis of modern trends in the European IP regime but also from his thoughtful development of the thesis that free competition should be understood as the overarching principle guiding both IP protection and what we call antitrust law. Rudolph J.R. Peritz, New York Law School, author of Competition Policy in America and American Antitrust Institute, US This rich and challenging book offers a critical appraisal of the relationship between intellectual property law and competition law, from a particularly European perspective. Gustavo Ghidini highlights the deficiencies in studying each of these areas of law independently and argues for a more holistic approach, insisting that it is more useful, and indeed essential, to consider them as interdependent. He does this first by examining how competition and intellectual property (IP) converge, diverge, and inform one another. Secondly, he assesses how IP law can be interpreted through the guiding principles of competition law antitrust and unfair competition and within the overarching principle of free competition. The book traces the evolution of modern IP law, which it claims is marked heavily both by over-protectionist trends such as the extension of copyright law to technological fields, where it trespasses on the territory of patent law and by attempts to monopolize the achievements of basic research, such as in the example of biotechnology. Through an examination of such emerging issues as access to standards of information and patenting of genetic materials, the author makes a clear case for a reading of IP law that promotes dynamic processes of innovation by competition , and competition by innovation , with related benefits to consumer welfare such as wider choices, greater access to culture and information, and lower prices. Advanced students and researchers in all areas of intellectual property will find this book a stimulating alternative to traditional interpretations of the subject.