This groundbreaking work offers a first-of-its-kind overview of legal informatics, the academic discipline underlying the technological transformation and economics of the legal industry. Edited by Daniel Martin Katz, Ron Dolin, and Michael J. Bommarito, and featuring contributions from more than two dozen academic and industry experts, chapters cover the history and principles of legal informatics and background technical concepts - including natural language processing and distributed ledger technology. The volume also presents real-world case studies that offer important insights into document review, due diligence, compliance, case prediction, billing, negotiation and settlement, contracting, patent management, legal research, and online dispute resolution. Written for both technical and non-technical readers, Legal Informatics is the ideal resource for anyone interested in identifying, understanding, and executing opportunities in this exciting field.

This book employs scholarly analysis to ground practical tools for applying the EU Trade Mark law (EUTM) functionality refusal grounds to address business needs when registering trade marks consisting of product characteristics. The study comprehensively examines the absolute grounds for a refusal of registration of functional signs under EUTM. It interprets the functionality refusal grounds through objective tests, focusing on the pro-competition rationale of denying trade mark exclusivity on product features that are technically or aesthetically important for competitors’ ability to trade in alternative products. The work takes a comparative approach looking at the US trade dress functionality doctrine, and a law and economics perspective on the role of trade marks and brands in the marketplace. It explores how competition rules related to market definition and the substitutability of products, as well as marketing and design findings related to branding and aesthetics, could be integrated into the legal assessment of EUTM functionality. The volume will be of interest to academics and researchers working in the areas of Intellectual Property Law, Trade Mark and Design Law, EU Law, Comparative Law, and Branding.

Although legal scholars have begun to explore the implications of neuroscientific research for criminal law, the field has yet to assess the potential of such research for intellectual property law - a legal regime governing over one-third of the US economy. Intellectual Property and the Brain addresses this gap by showing how tools meant to improve our understanding of human behavior inevitably shape the balance of power between artists and copyists, businesses and consumers. This first of its kind book demonstrates how neuroscience can improve our flawed approach to regulating creative conduct and commercial communications when applied with careful attention to the reasons that our system of intellectual property law exists. With a host of real-life examples of art, design, and advertising, the book charts a path forward for legal actors seeking reforms that will unlock artistic innovation, elevate economic productivity, and promote consumer welfare.

This book addresses the key issues, challenges and implications arising out of changes in the copyright law and corresponding judicial responses. Using concrete examples, the book does not assume any prior knowledge of copyright law, but brings together leading intellectual property researchers to consider the significant role of copyright law in shaping the needs of the modern digital world. It provides an insight into two distinct arenas: copyright and digital media. The exponential increase in the ability to multiply and disseminate information by digital means has sparked numerous conflicts pertaining to copyright - and in turn has prompted lawmakers to expand the scope of copyright protection in the digital age. Bearing in mind the new questions that the advent of the digital age has raised on the role and function of copyright, the book presents a collection of papers largely covering new frontiers and changing horizons especially in this area. The contributions intensively address core issues including the exhaustion principle, copyright and digital media, liability of hosting service providers, the originality requirement, accessibility to published works for the visually disabled, criminalization of copyright infringement, and software protection under copyright law, among others. Consisting of 14 papers, this book will be equally interesting to researchers, policymakers, practitioners and lawmakers, especially those active in the field of Intellectual Property Rights (IPR).

This major new contribution to the literature on charity law is the result of collaboration between an expert academic and a leading practitioner in the field. The combination of their different skills and experience produces an in-depth analysis of the law that is informed both by detailed scholarship and an understanding of how charity law really operates in practice today. It incorporates analysis of the likely effects of the Human Rights Act 1998 and of the important changes made by The Finance Act 2000 and The Trustee Act 2000.

Praise for Private Equity

"Harold Bierman has blended an excellent mix of important principles with real case study examples for a better understanding on a rather sophisticated finance subject."
–Edward M. Dudley, Vice President & General Auditor, ABB Americas

"The role of private equity firms in financing buyouts as well as providing growth capital has expanded significantly in the past decade. In a clear, concise way, Harold Bierman provides a timely and astute analysis of the virtues of private equity as well as creative quantitative methodologies that are applicable to real-life transactions. This book should become essential reading for investors, intermediaries, financial advisors and the management of private, almost private, or soon-to-be private firms."
–James A. Rowan Jr., Managing Director, Investment Banking
Legg Mason Wood Walker, Inc.

"As the private equity asset class has grown to over $300 billion in the last three years, Bierman analyzes the fundamentals behind the investment decisions of this increasingly important sector. Once completing the book, you will understand the fundamental analytical framework underlying private equity investment."
–Peter Nolan, Partner, Leonard Green and Partners

"In looking at the private equity arena, Professor Bierman has brought together a diverse group of metrics and valuation formulas into a single text. The book provides a valuable combination of academic theory and real-life case studies. It provides many insights."
–Peter H. Vogel, Vice President, MeadWestvaco Corporation

Internet of Things and the Law: Legal Strategies for Consumer-Centric Smart Technologies is the most comprehensive and up-to-date analysis of the legal issues in the Internet of Things (IoT). For decades, the decreasing importance of tangible wealth and power - and the increasing significance of their disembodied counterparts - has been the subject of much legal research. For some time now, legal scholars have grappled with how laws drafted for tangible property and predigital 'offline' technologies can cope with dematerialisation, digitalisation, and the internet. As dematerialisation continues, this book aims to illuminate the opposite movement: rematerialisation, namely, the return of data, knowledge, and power within a physical 'smart' world. This development frames the book's central question: can the law steer rematerialisation in a human-centric and socially just direction? To answer it, the book focuses on the IoT, the sociotechnological phenomenon that is primarily responsible for this shift. After a thorough analysis of how existing laws can be interpreted to empower IoT end users, Noto La Diega leaves us with the fundamental question of what happens when the law fails us and concludes with a call for collective resistance against 'smart' capitalism.

The primary purpose of a patent law system should be to enhance economic efficiency, in particular by providing incentives for making inventions. The conventional wisdom is that patents should therefore be strictly exclusive rights. Moreover, in practice patent owners are almost never forced to give up their right to exclude others and receive only a certain amount of remuneration with, for instance, compulsory licensing. Other economically interesting patent-law objectives, however, include the transfer and dissemination of knowledge. Mechanisms exist by which the patent owner decides if he or she would prefer exclusive or non-exclusive rights, for instance the opportunity to declare the willingness to license and create patent pools. But it is questionable whether these mechanisms are sufficient and efficient enough in view of the existence of patent trolls and other problems. This work challenges the conventional wisdom to a certain extent and makes proposals for improvements.

Praise for "Patent Searching: Tools & Techniques"

"Hunt delivers a comprehensive yet readable treatise on patent searching. Laying out methods and tools to implement a systematic search process, Patent Searching elucidates the what, why, when, and how--a desirable contribution to those involved in this endeavor."
--Mark Hutcherson, Editor, "Patent Information Users Group Newsletter"

"Patent Searching: Tools & Techniques" provides an essential training and reference tool for patent attorneys, patent agents, and their support staff. David Hunt and his team of patent experts detail the methods used in the art of professional patent searching, the current tools to accomplish that task, and approaches for reporting that information. The wide range of search types they outline will yield invaluable data for any applicant who wants to increase their chances of earning a profitable return on a corporation's substantial investment. Along with search tools, this practical book covers a mixture of patent law, patent search theory, and practice, offering a global approach to patents that will be useful to attorneys and agents not just in the United States, but all around the world.

Constructive trusts significantly interfere with the rights of an apparent legal owner of property. This makes it necessary for their imposition to be properly explained and justified. Unfortunately, attempts to rationalise constructive trusts as a whole-as opposed to specific doctrines or particular aspects of constructive trusts-have been few and far between. Rationalising Constructive Trusts proposes a new structure for a coherent understanding of constructive trusts. By using a combination of conceptual tools, it provides answers to a number of crucial questions, for example: What are the ingredients of a constructive trust claim? What are the limits of constructive trusts? How can we rationalise the imposition of constructive trusts in particular situations? Why do judges exercise varying degrees of remedial discretion in different doctrines? From a wider perspective, the structured understanding helps us to appreciate the precise ambit and role of express, constructive, and resulting trusts.

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.

The book deals with (unfortunately) a highly relevant question of extraordinary measures adopted in many countries in connection with the recent pandemic, and the impact of such measures on ownership rights and constitutional freedoms as a whole. Using the methods of synthesis, analysis and historical comparison, the researchers address this issue from different perspectives, starting with the origins of state-governed crisis management, through the theoretical status of such measures and their role in the legal system, to the question of liability for damages arising from their imposition and application. Based on a critical analysis of existing measures, the book provides feedback on their compliance with basic legal principles and suggests possible solutions of encountered problems.

View the Table of Contents. Read the Introduction.

.,."Perhaps the most impressive thing about Vaidhyanathan, a superb writer and speaker, is that he has made such complicated issues not only understandable but almost, well, entertaining."
--"Library Journal"

"A fascinating journey through the cultural history of copyright law. "Copyrights and Copywrongs" is remarkably readable, mercifully free of legal jargon, and entertaining. It is also thoroughly researched and includes extensive notes and references. This text belongs on the shelf of anyone interested in the ethics and development of copyright."
--"International Journal of Law and Information Technology"

"Vaidhyanathan traces the expansion of American copyright from the late nineteenth century on, giving an especially interesting account of the complexities and absurdities raised by its application to film and music."
-- "American Quarterly"

"This book makes it clear that copyright struggles are not new and will continue in the years ahead. . . . He makes that case readable, understandable, and even entertaining."
--"Portal: Libraries and the Academy"

"Remarkably readable, free of legal jargon, and entertaining . . . the author's arguments are cogent, enlightening, and important to all information professionals."
--"College & Research Libraries"

"Illuminating"
-- "Bookforum" April-June 2002

"It has taken lawyers 200-plus years to morph copyright law from the balanced compromise that our framers struck to the extraordinary system of control that it has become. In this beautifully written book, a nonlawyer has uncovered much of the damage done. "Copyrights and Copywrongs" is a rich andcompelling account of the bending of American copyright law, and a promise of the balance that we could once again make the law become."
--Lawrence Lessig, Stanford Law School and author of "Code and Other Laws of Cyberspace"

"Siva Vaidhyanathan has done a big favor for the academic and library communities. In this book, he has spelled out in clear, understandable language what's at stake in the battles over the nation's intellectual property. The issues brought forward are critical to the future of scholarship and creativity. Librarians and academics are wise to purchase this book and add it to their amust read' lists."
--Nancy Kranich, President, American Library Association, 2000a2001

""Copyrights and Copywrongs" is an urgent information-age wake-up call to a public cocooned in belief that acopyright' is a seal and safeguard for consumers and producers of culture-ware. This book guides us into the legal labyrinth of a new world of so-called intellectual property, in which afair use' isn't fair, where rights are waived and free speech--when we can get it--costs a great deal of money. From print books to video games, "Copyrights and Copywrongs" shows free expression in a legalistic chokehold. Clearly written, meticulously argued, this book is a must."
--Cecelia Tichi, author of"Embodiment of a Nation: Human Form in American Spaces"

"Bravo! When you read this brillant, often-amusing, always-penetrating book-- and you must read it as soon as possible -- you will be persuaded that our Founding Fathers were wise and right when they made the law allowing an author's copyright to exist for a limited time only, either 14 or 28 years."--"CU Cityview"

Copyright reflects farmore than economic interests. Embedded within conflicts over royalties and infringement are cultural values--about race, class, access, ownership, free speech, and democracy--which influence how rights are determined and enforced. Questions of legitimacy--of what constitutes "intellectual property" or "fair use," and of how to locate a precise moment of cultural creation--have become enormously complicated in recent years, as advances in technology have exponentially increased the speed of cultural reproduction and dissemination.

In Copyrights and Copywrongs, Siva Vaidhyanathan tracks the history of American copyright law through the 20th century, from Mark Twain's vehement exhortations for "thick" copyright protection, to recent lawsuits regarding sampling in rap music and the "digital moment," exemplified by the rise of Napster and MP3 technology. He argues persuasively that in its current punitive, highly restrictive form, American copyright law hinders cultural production, thereby contributing to the poverty of civic culture.

In addition to choking cultural expression, recent copyright law, Vaidhyanathan argues, effectively sanctions biases against cultural traditions which differ from the Anglo-European model. In African-based cultures, borrowing from and building upon earlier cultural expressions is not considered a legal trespass, but a tribute. Rap and hip hop artists who practice such "borrowing" by sampling and mixing, however, have been sued for copyright violation and forced to pay substantial monetary damages. Similarly, the oral transmission of culture, which has a centuries-old tradition within African American culture, is complicated by current copyright laws. How, for example, can ownership of music, lyrics, or stories which have been passed down through generations be determined? Upon close examination, strict legal guidelines prove insensitive to the diverse forms of cultural expression prevalent in the United States, and reveal much about the racialized cultural values which permeate our system of laws. Ultimately, copyright is a necessary policy that should balance public and private interests but the recent rise of "intellectual property" as a concept have overthrown that balance. Copyright, Vaidhyanathan asserts, is policy, not property.

Bringing to light the republican principles behind original copyright laws as well as present-day imbalances and future possibilities for freer expression and artistic equity, this volume takes important strides towards unraveling the complex web of culture, law, race, and technology in today's global marketplace.

This volume fills an important need for understanding about the interplay between China's intellectual property protection system and the potential for innovation in China's economy. Using examples from the pharmaceutical and biotech industries, the author suggests that, despite the widely documented challenges facing China's IPR protection system, the system has a demonstrable effect on innovation. The author suggests that China's patent system promotes innovation through economic incentives, soft factors of public encouragement, and intentional development strategies. This book is also useful as an overview of China's biotech and pharmaceutical sectors, offering a range of richly detailed case studies on China's industrial development strategies in these sectors. A number of important patent disputes between Chinese and foreign companies are also examined to useful effect. In the highly contentious policy world of intellectual property protection and pharmaceutical and biotech industry development, the volume offers a refreshing combination of detail and insight.'uPitman B. Potter, University of British Columbia, Canada'Yahong Li's pioneering study, Imitation to Innovation in China, breaks new ground in closely examining the extent to which the Chinese government's patent policies and patent activity by Chinese firms are influencing China's coming transformation from an imitation-oriented country to an innovation-oriented one. Her combination of theoretical and empirical approaches exploring the links between public policy, patenting activity and technological innovation (commercialization) is an important contribution to development studies, not just for China but for other newly innovative countries as well.'uWilliam O. Hennessey, Franklin Pierce Law Center, USA Following decades in which China's approach to technology has been to imitate, the country is now transforming itself to become innovation-oriented. This pioneering study examines whether patents play as similar a role in promoting innovation in China as they do in the West, exploring the interplay between patents and China's biotechnology and pharmaceutical industries in particular. The author argues for a stronger patent regime based on an extensive review of the technological capacity, R&D models, patent filings and litigations, and issues in patent law, which involve China's biotechnology and pharmaceutical industries. By comparing China with other developing countries and analyzing China's uniqueness in terms of its development stage, technological capacity and the strengths and weaknesses in its patent system, the author concludes that China is distinguished from the prevailing view that patents play a limited role in innovation in developing countries. The book also discusses whether and how patents can promote innovation in China's biotechnology and pharmaceutical industries, based on the study of market scale, R&D capacity, innovation model and patent legislation and cases.

Exploring the debate over the benefits of legal protection for fashion design, this book focuses on how a combination of minimal legal protections for design, evolving social norms, digital technology, and market forces can promote innovation and creativity in a business known for its fast-paced remixing and borrowing. Focusing on the advantages and disadvantages of the main US and EU IP laws that protect fashion design in the world's biggest fashion markets, it describes how recent US case law in copyright and trademark cases has led to misaligned incentives for the industry and a lack of clear protection, while in the EU, the CJEU's interpretation of the pan-European design rights system has created significant overlap with copyright law and risks leading to the overprotection of design. The book proposes that creativity and innovation in fashion derive some benefit from a limited unregistered design right protection and that cumulation with copyright protection is unhelpful. It also proposes that there is a larger role for developing social norms relating to sustainability, the ethics of cultural appropriation, and the online shaming of counterfeiters, that can also help create a fair equilibrium between protection and borrowing in fashion design.

Exploring the debate over the benefits of legal protection for fashion design, this book focuses on how a combination of minimal legal protections for design, evolving social norms, digital technology, and market forces can promote innovation and creativity in a business known for its fast-paced remixing and borrowing. Focusing on the advantages and disadvantages of the main US and EU IP laws that protect fashion design in the world's biggest fashion markets, it describes how recent US case law in copyright and trademark cases has led to misaligned incentives for the industry and a lack of clear protection, while in the EU, the CJEU's interpretation of the pan-European design rights system has created significant overlap with copyright law and risks leading to the overprotection of design. The book proposes that creativity and innovation in fashion derive some benefit from a limited unregistered design right protection and that cumulation with copyright protection is unhelpful. It also proposes that there is a larger role for developing social norms relating to sustainability, the ethics of cultural appropriation, and the online shaming of counterfeiters, that can also help create a fair equilibrium between protection and borrowing in fashion design.

First published in 1992, Authorship and Copyright traces the history of constructions of authorship as a legal reality. It offers an alternative to the two mainstream interpretations that have traditionally been assigned to authorship: the Romantic dialectical 'birth of the author' or the language-based post-structuralist 'death of the author.' Saunders examines the shortcomings of both schemes by arguing that they impose an arbitrary philosophical direction on the history of authorship and the law of copyright. Saunders addresses the issues relating to copyright and the construction of authorship as a legal status. Combining information and polemic, the author explores such matters as the historical and theoretical relations of copyright and the droit moral, the aestheticization of the law and the juridification of aesthetics, and the argument that authorship as a legal reality is a historically contingent and variable arrangement that cannot be separated from its cultural and juridical context. This book will be of interest to students of law, literature and philosophy.

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.

The effort to win federal copyright protection for dance choreography in the United States was a simultaneously racialized and gendered contest. Copyright and choreography, particularly as tied with whiteness, have a refractory history. This book examines the evolution of choreographic works from being federally non-copyrightable, unless they partook of dramatic or narrative structures, to becoming a category of works potentially copyrightable under the 1976 Copyright Act. Crucial to this evolution is the development of whiteness as status property, both as an aesthetic and cultural force and a legally accepted and protected form of property. The choreographic inheritances of Loie Fuller, George Balanchine, and Martha Graham are particularly important to map because these constitute crucial sites upon which negotiations on how to package bodies of both choreographers and dancers - as racialized, sexualized, nationalized, and classed - are staged, reflective of larger social, political, and cultural tensions.

Intellectual Property offers unrivalled coverage of all major intellectual property rights and is designed to equip you with a strong understanding of the wealth of domestic, European and international laws at play in this area. This tenth edition has been substantially updated and streamlined to ensure the book best fits the contemporary intellectual property syllabus. Key updates to the new edition include: * Significant restructuring to reduce the length of each chapter without compromising on coverage of each topic. * A revised chapter structure which maps closely to the structure of a typical intellectual property module. * Discussion on the creation of a European patent with unitary effect and a Unified Patents Court. * Coverage of the new codifying trade mark regulation and the trade mark directive requiring implementation in 2019. * An outline of the Intellectual Property (Unjustified Threats) Act 2017. * Consideration of the potential wide-ranging effects of Brexit in relation to intellectual property rights and protections.

European memory institutions are repositories of a wealth of rare documents that record public domain content. These documents are often stored in 'dark-archives' to which members of the public are granted limited access, resulting in the public domain content recorded therein being relegated to a form of 'forgotten-knowledge'. Digitisation offers a means by which such public domain content can be made speedily and easily accessible to users around the world. For this reason, it has been hailed as the harbinger of a new 'digital renaissance'. This book examines the topical issue of the need to preserve exclusivity over digitised versions of rare documents recording public domain content. Based on data gathered through an empirical survey of digitisation projects undertaken by fourteen memory institutions in five European Union Member States, it argues for the introduction of exclusive rights in digitised versions of rare documents recording public domain textual content as a means of incentivising private-sector investment in the digitisation process. It concludes by presenting a detailed proposal for a European Union Regulation that would grant memory institutions a limited-term related right in digitised versions of rare documents held in their collections subject to stringent exceptions and limitations that are designed to safeguard user interests.

This book aims to connect narratives associated with the past to the international regime that protects property and contract rights of foreign investors. The book scrutinizes justifications offered to sustain practices associated with colonialism, imperialism, civilized justice, debt, and development, revealing that a number of the rationales offered in support of investment law disciplines replicate those arising out of this discredited past. By revealing these linkages, the book raises concerns about investment law's premises. It would appear that the normative foundations for today's regime reproduces discursive practices that are less than compelling. The book argues that citizens deserve something more than historically discredited reasons to justify the exercise of power over them - something more than mere pretext.

Wealth can be transferred on death in a number of different ways, most commonly by will. Yet a person can also use a variety of other means to benefit someone on death. Examples include donationes mortis causa, joint tenancies, trusts, life-insurance contracts and nominations in pension and retirement plans. In the US, these modes of transfer are grouped under the category of 'will-substitutes' and are generally treated as testamentary dispositions. Much has been written about the effect of the use of will-substitutes in the US, but little is generally known about developments in other jurisdictions. For the first time, this collection of contributions looks at will-substitutes from a comparative perspective. It examines mechanisms that pass wealth on death across a number of common law, civil law and mixed legal jurisdictions, and explores the rationale behind their use. It analyses them from different viewpoints, including those of owners of businesses, investors, as well as creditors, family members and dependants. The aims of the volume are to show the complexity and dynamics of wealth transfers on death across jurisdictions, to identify patterns between jurisdictions, and to report the attitudes towards the different modes of transfer in light of their utility and the potential frictions they give rise to with policies and principles underpinning current laws.

Linking traditional and local products to a specific area is increasingly felt as a necessity in a globalised market, and Geographical Indications (GIs) are emerging as a multifunctional tool capable of performing this and many other functions. This book analyses the evolving nature of EU sui generis GIs by focusing on their key element, the origin link, and concludes that the history of the product in the broad sense has become a major factor to prove the link between a good and a specific place. For the first time, this area of Intellectual Property Law is investigated from three different, although interrelated, perspectives: the history and comparative assessment of the systems of protection of Indications of Geographical Origin adopted in the European jurisdictions from the beginning of the 20th century; the empirical analysis of the trends emerging from the practice of EUGIs; and the policy debates surrounding them and their importance for the fulfilment of the general goals of the EU Common Agricultural Policy. The result is an innovative and rounded analysis of the very nature of the EU Law of GIs that, starting from its past, investigates the present and the likely future of this Intellectual Property Right. This book provides an interesting and innovative contribution to the field and will be of interest to GI scholars and Intellectual Property students, as well as anyone willing to gain a better understanding of this compelling area of law.