This significantly updated second edition of the Research Handbook on Patent Law and Theory provides comprehensive coverage of new research for patent protection in three major jurisdictions: the United States, Europe and Japan. Leading patent scholars and practitioners provide an innovative comparative analysis of fundamental issues such as patentability, examination procedure and the scope of patent protection, with current issues such as patent protection for industry standards, computer software and business methods. Updates to this second edition reflect on the dramatic changes that have taken place in the US Patent System since the first edition, including the American Invents Act that has introduced the first-inventor-to-file policy and post-issuance proceedings to challenge validity. Current topics such as the Unified Patent Court, patent litigation updates reform in the US, design patents and patent inventions in medical science are also addressed. Providing a strong scholarly foundation, as well as useful tips for practitioners to protect their intellectual assets in technologies effectively in the global market, this Research Handbook will be of great interest to legal scholars and students, as well as lawyers and patent attorneys. Contributors include: J.N. Adams, C. Appelt, R.C. Dreyfuss, H. Goddar, H.P. Goeetting, O. Granstrand, S. Hetmank, C.M. Ho, C.M. Holman, C. Karl, J.B. Krauss, A.L. Landers, S. Luginbuehl, T. Miyamoto, T. Muller-Stoy, X.T. Nguyen, S. Ono, C. Rademacher, G. Reilly, S. Schohe, D. Stauder, T. Takenaka, J. Thomas

Liberal theory of contract is traditionally associated with the view according to which contract law can be explained simply as a mechanism for the enforcement of promises. The book bucks this trend by offering a theory of contract law based on a careful philosophical investigation of not only the similarities,but also the much-overlooked differences between contract and promise. Drawing on an analysis of a range of issues pertaining to the moral underpinnings of promissory and contractual obligations, the relationships in the context of which they typically feature, and the nature of the legal and moral institutions that support them, the book argues for the abandonment of the over-simplified notion that the law can systematically replicate existing moral or social institutions or simply enforce the rights or the obligations to which they give rise, without altering these institutions in the process and while leaving their intrinsic qualities intact. In its place the book offers an intriguing thesis concerning not only the relationship between contract and promise, but also the distinct functions and values that underlie contract law and explain contractual obligation. In turn, this thesis is shown to have an important bearing on theoretical and practical issues such as the choice of remedy for breach of contract, and broader concerns of political morality such as the appropriate scope of the freedom of contract and the role of the state in shaping and regulating contractual activity. The book's arguments on such issues, while rooted in distinctly liberal principles of political morality, often produce very different conclusions to those traditionally associated with liberal theory of contract, thus lending it a new lease of life in the face of its traditional as well as contemporary critiques.

Ten years after the first study published in this field by the European Centre of Tort and Insurance Law, liability for medical malpractice is still a hot topic throughout Europe and it continues to expand and develop. In order to provide an update on the current situation across European legal systems, this book includes fourteen country reports authored by renowned experts from each legal system. In addition to providing a theoretical survey of key issues, each contributor also analyzed six hypotheticals based on actual cases, thereby also providing practical guidance on major aspects ofliability claims. A concluding comparative analysis highlights commonalities and differences in the liability rules employed, dispute resolution procedures and the insurance background.

Combines detailed coverage of the substantive law with support for development of the key skills of problem-solving, critical analysis and application of legal authority. Clear engaging writing style which encourages students and supports learning. Contemporary every-day examples provide context and help bring contract law to life. Technical and unfamiliar terms are defined at first use and listed in an end-of-chapter glossary. Assessment tips highlight opportunities to stand out from the crowd or avoid common mistakes and help students understand what examiners are looking for.

National institutions involved in environmental policy planning respond more to the accommodation of special interests, whether vested, parochial, or societal, than to the realities of technological advances. This situation, combined with the added problem of widespread scientific illiteracy, makes the formulation of effective environmental policy a very difficult task to accomplish.

Our politico-legal system and relationships among science, scientists, and society are explored here with specific attention to issues arising from pharmaceutical innovation and biotechnology. The identification of the resultant dilemmas reveal disenfranchisement and point to possible means of reform. Howell focuses on the need for multilateral responsibility for communication to improve the accommodation of science in policy. A truly multidisciplinary study, this book is for environmental planners as well as the interested public.

There is a growing body of scholarship analysing the many international organizations, government agencies and civil society groups whose activities define the relationship between human rights and intellectual property. This timely and engaging volume illustrates the richness and diversity of this literature. It explores the wider historical and institutional context of these topics; the meaning of key international instruments; writings that clarify ambiguous legal norms; works that advocate the recognition of new legal norms; institutional and strategic issues and critical or cautionary perspectives. Including an original introduction by Professor Helfer, a leading scholar in the field, this is a must-have volume that will be of use to lawyers, judges, legal scholars and researchers interested in the areas of intellectual property and human rights and their intersection.

This book evaluates the risks that China's intellectual property (IP) regime poses to innovation. China's IP regime has been heavily criticized as potentially stifling innovation. However, the country's innovation capabilities have risen significantly and major reforms have recently been made to its IP regime. How risky, really, is China's IP regime for innovation? This book investigates this question at different units of analysis based on a multidisciplinary assessment involving law, management, economics, and political science. Specifically, it critically appraises China's substantive IP laws, measures for boosting patent quantity and quality, measures for transmitting and exploiting technological knowledge, new experimental IP measures, and China's systems for administering and enforcing IP. Practitioners and scholars from various backgrounds can benefit from the up-to-date analysis as well as the practical managerial tools provided, including risk assessment matrices for businesses and recommendations for institutional reform.

This book introduces and develops Contract Governance as a new approach to contract theory. While the concept of governance has already been developed in Williamson's seminal article, it has, ironically, not received much attention in general contract law theory. Indeed, Contract Governance appears to be an important and necessary complement to corporate governance and in fact, as the second, equally important pillar of governance research in the core of private law. With this in mind, Grundmann, Moeslein, and Riesenhuber provide a novel approach in setting an international and interdisciplinary research agenda for developing contract law scholarship. Contract Governance focuses particularly on the ways in which a governance perspective leads to research questions that have been neglected in traditional contract law scholarship, and how, from a governance perspective, the questions are dealt with in a different manner and style. Combining substantive chapters and commentaries, this collection of essays addresses an array of topics, including: third party impact and contract governance problems in herd behaviour; governance of networks of contracts; governance in long-term contractual relationships; contract governance and rule setting; and contract governance and political dimensions.

Democracy of Sound is the first book to examine music piracy in the United States from the dawn of sound recording to the rise of Napster and online file-sharing. It asks why Americans stopped thinking of copyright as a monopoly-a kind of necessary evil-and came to see intellectual property as sacrosanct and necessary for the prosperity of an "information economy." Recordings only became eligible for federal copyright in 1972, following years of struggle between pirates, musicians, songwriters, broadcasters, and record companies over the right to own sound. Beginning in the 1890s, the book follows the competing visions of Americans who proposed ways to keep obscure and noncommercial music in circulation, preserve out-of-print recordings from extinction, or simply make records more freely and cheaply available. Genteel jazz collectors swapped and copied rare records in the 1930s; radicals pitched piracy as a mortal threat to capitalism in the 1960s, while hip-hop DJs from the 1970s onwards reused and transformed sounds to create a freer and less regulated market for mixtapes. Each challenged the idea that sound could be owned by anyone. The conflict led to the contemporary stalemate between those who believe that "information wants to be free" and those who insist that economic prosperity depends on protecting intellectual property. The saga of piracy also shows how the dubbers, bootleggers, and tape traders forged new social networks that ultimately gave rise to the social media of the twenty first century. Democracy of Sound is a colorful story of people making law, resisting law, and imagining how law might shape the future of music, from the Victrola and pianola to iTunes and BitTorrent.

Over the past decade, the European Union and national policy-makers alike have paid more attention to childhood poverty and children's rights. Whether this has led to better policies, and whether these policies have in turn resulted in less childhood poverty and more human dignity, remains debatable. Children's rights may provide some common ground for the different perspectives on the causes of poverty. They also introduce specific process requirements, in particular the participation of the poor. At the same time, children's rights may gain from an encounter with child poverty studies, not least in grasping the complexity of child poverty and in making a realistic assessment of their own potential for addressing child poverty. This book introduces several approaches in the field of child poverty and children's rights studies, and identifies intersections between different theoretical approaches from both domains. It is a collaborative project of Centrum OASeS and the UNICEF Chair in Children's Rights, both located at the University of Antwerp. The Chair, established in 2007, acts as a knowledge broker of children's rights within the academic community and between the academic community and policy and practice, through teaching, research, and service to the community. The research topics of the Centrum OASeS include poverty and other forms of social exclusion, ethnic minorities, urban policy, social economy and supported employment, and social networks.

Law and Economics in Jane Austen traces principles of law and economics in sex, marriage and romance as set out in the novels of Jane Austen, unveiling how those meticulous principles still control today's modern romance. You will learn fascinating new insights into law and economics by seeing these disciplines through Jane Austen's eyes. Readers who find themselves wishing Jane Austen had written just one more novel, or that she had somewhere offered more examination and analysis of her characters' predicaments, or who desire to go deeper with her investigation of love, money and culture will praise this book. Discovering the legal and economic principles that drove her stories, Jane Austen's Law & Economics reveals that the more things change, the more they stay the same. Love and money are constants in social connection. While culture may have changed over 300 years, principles of law and economics remain staples of modern romance - which is why Jane Austen continues to fascinate the modern mind. So sit back, enjoy, and be pleasantly taught and surprised at what you will learn from the methodical mind of Jane.

When first written into the Constitution, intellectual property aimed to facilitate "progress of science and the useful arts" by granting rights to authors and inventors. Today, when rapid technological evolution accompanies growing wealth inequality and political and social divisiveness, the constitutional goal of "progress" may pertain to more basic, human values, redirecting IP's emphasis to the commonweal instead of private interests. Against Progress considers contemporary debates about intellectual property law as concerning the relationship between the constitutional mandate of progress and fundamental values, such as equality, privacy, and distributive justice, that are increasingly challenged in today's internet age. Following a legal analysis of various intellectual property court cases, Jessica Silbey examines the experiences of everyday creators and innovators navigating ownership, sharing, and sustainability within the internet eco-system and current IP laws. Crucially, the book encourages refiguring the substance of "progress" and the function of intellectual property in terms that demonstrate the urgency of art and science to social justice today.

With an acceleration in the last decades, the language of property, piracy and theft has become mainstream in copyright matters. Scholars have argued that this latent propertization has progressively led to the undue expansion of copyright and an enclosure of knowledge, causing clashes with users' fundamental rights and EU social and cultural policies. Challenging the validity of such critiques, Propertizing European Copyright demonstrates that these distortive effects are only the result of mishandled property rhetoric and that a commitment to copyright propertization could enable a more internally consistent and balanced development of EU copyright law. To prove the point, the book provides a comprehensive analysis of causes and effects of propertization in copyright history, comparing the impact of private and constitutional property doctrines in selected national experiences with the unsystematic propertization of EU copyright. The author argues for a systemization of EU copyright law, and provides practical examples of how propertization could help tackling the pitfalls of the harmonization process, achieving a greater interpretative coherence and a more stable copyright balance. Academics and policy makers engaged in the debate on EU copyright harmonization will find the multidisciplinary approach employed in this work compelling. Judges, practitioners and graduate students interested in deepening their knowledge of the construction of EU copyright will also find in this book an all-encompassing resource, rich in practical and theoretical insight.

This Research Handbook explores contemporary intangible cultural heritage (ICH) from the perspectives of both law and heritage. It questions, probes and interrogates many different aspects of contemporary ICH, including the definitions and legal frameworks designed to safeguard it. In doing so the Research Handbook highlights not only gaps and inconsistencies, but also questions the relevance, of the legal framework as it applies to ICH itself. Each chapter is concerned with a different aspect of contemporary ICH, international treaties and the law, including the 2003 Convention for the Safeguarding of the Intangible Cultural Heritage. A diverse range of contemporary examples are explored, ranging from the local and global identity of migrant children, to language and the Berlin techno music scene. Taken collectively, and with its focus on ?'contemporary?' culture, this Handbook is a departure from the established discourse that tends to include some forms of heritage to the exclusion of others. The authors challenge the authority of existing legal instruments, expose their limitations and propose innovative ways in which contemporary forms of ICH can be safeguarded, whether via the law or other means. This innovative Handbook will be of great interest to academics researching the legal protection of ICH and the relationship between ICH, human rights, communities, identity and international trade. Those with an interest in the protection of a-typical intellectual property will also find this Handbook to be a source of valuable information. Contributors include: L. Belder, J. Blake, M. Blakely, A. Brown, J. Brown, N. Chipangura, L. Colomer, C. Cummings, Y. Donders, H. Enright, A. Figaroa, S. Harding, L. Lixinski, F. Macmillan, M. Pavis, J. Schofield, V. Vadi, J. van Donkersgoed, A. Vavaide, C. Waelde

The so-called Quistclose trust probably represents the single most important application of equitable principles in commercial life. (Lord Millett in the foreword to this book). The decision of the House of Lords in Twinsectra v Yardley has refocused attention on the Quistclose trust. Although accepted by insolvency lawyers as a convenient tool for corporate rescue, the precise basis of the trust has always been in doubt. The purpose of these essays is to explore the foundations of the trust and subject them to a searching analysis. Contributors: Robert Stevens (Oxford), 'Rolls Razor Ltd'; William Swadling (Oxford), 'Orthodoxy'; James Penner (LSE), 'Lord Millett's Analysis'; Lionel Smith (McGill), 'Understanding the Power'; Robert Chambers (Alberta),'Restrictions on the Use of Money'; Peter Birks (Oxford),'Retrieving Tied Money'; Ewan McKendrick (Oxford), 'Commerce'; Robert Stevens (Oxford), 'Insolvency'; George Gretton (Edinburgh),'Scotland'.

On November 20, 1989, the United Nations unanimously adopted the Convention on the Rights of the Child. Therefore, November 20 has become a date which signals the recognition by the international community that children have developmental and autonomy rights as essential benchmarks for children themselves and for those responsible for their well-being and healthy development. However, as long as society, through international cooperation, lacks serious investment in child development, the rights of all children especially the rights of young children and children living in exceptionally difficult conditions are soft rights only. The emancipation of the young child and the rehabilitation and emancipation of those who are deprived, exploited, abused, and neglected remain in a legal shadowland. This book explores this legal shadowland, introducing the concepts of the 'Trias pedagogica' and 'Transism, ' in order to shed light on the obligations and responsibilities of states and other actors in the empowerment of children, caregivers, and communities.

In today's highly globalized and regulated economy, private and public organizations face myriad complex laws and regulations. A process designed to detect and prevent regulatory compliance failures is vital. However, such an effective process cannot succeed without development and maintenance of a strong compliance and legal risk management culture. This wide-ranging handbook pulls together work from experts across universities and industries around the world in a variety of key disciplines such as law, management, and business ethics. It provides an all-inclusive resource, specifying what needs to be known and what needs to be further pursued in these developing areas. With no such single text currently available, the book fills a gap in our current understanding of legal risk management, regulatory compliance, and ethics, offering the potential to advance research efforts and enhance our approaches to effective legal risk management practices. Edited by an expert on legal risk management, this book is an essential reference for students, researchers, and professionals with an interest in business law, risk management, strategic management, and business ethics.

For this comprehensive collection, the editor has brought together key readings on the subject of the law and economics of intellectual property rights - patents, copyrights and trademarks. It provides a judicious selection of the most important published research on this crucial topic, drawing equally from the law and economics literature. It thus brings together frequently cited classic articles that are rarely encountered in a single published source. The articles have been selected on the basis of three primary criteria: their continuing influence in legal and economic discussions; their longevity (important in a field where the volume of published work is very large and growing very quickly); and their relevance to contemporary theoretical and policy debates. The chosen writings delve deeply into theory, empirics, and institutional detail, ranging from Edwin Mansfield's early, influential study on patents and imitation costs, to very recent work on the relationship between copyright law and the first amendment. This collection makes an indispensable desk reference for scholars of intellectual property rights.

This book identifies the definition of a child within the law, the rights of children, and discusses the extent to which primarily English law gives adequate recognition to and protection of these rights. To what extent does English law gives adequate recognition to and protection of the rights of children? Historically the idea of and protection of rights has focused on parental rights rather than the rights of the child. The rights of children have remained far less recognised and certain until recently. Using case studies from the United Kingdom and beyond, this book takes a thematic approach to children's rights and considers topics including: underlying concepts such as the welfare of the child and safeguarding, the right to education and to medical treatment, the right to freedom from abuse and/or sexual and commercial exploitation, including contemporary challenges from forced marriage, FGM, modern slavery and trafficking, the role of the State in relation to children in need of care and protection, children's rights in the criminal justice system, the right to contract and employment. In addition, the book provides an introduction to key aspects of domestic and international law, including the Children Act 1989, the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child, the European Convention on Human Rights and the Human Rights Act 1998. The book will be of great interest to law and social science students in the areas of Child Development and Protection, Human Rights Law, Family Law, Child Law, and Child Studies, as well as to social workers, police officers, magistrates, probation officers and other related professions.

This exciting new research review brings together and discusses seminal articles on the subject of transfer of property and private international law, ranging from the early twentieth century to present day. The first part focuses on classic principles concerning the lex situs rule, as well as on specialities regarding immovable property, tangible movable property and intangible property, conditional sale and securities transactions, goods in transit and confiscation of property. The second part is devoted to an in-depth and insightful examination of cultural property and private international law. Thoughtfully composed by the editor, this review provides a valuable source of information for researchers, academics and scholars alike.

"This Handbook is sure to become the ultimate sourcebook for everyone involved in the emerging field of nanotechnology. I would strongly recommend that any entrepreneur who wishes to begin a nanotechnology company and any investor who wishes to seek funding opportunities in nanotechnology read this work cover to cover. By providing the tools to evaluate this emerging discipline, it is a modern day Pilgrims Progress for professionals in the field."
-Doug Jamison, President and CEO, Harris & Harris Group, Inc.

"This Handbook adeptly explores the complex challenges nanotechnology poses for policy makers and the business community with regard to regulations, intellectual property rights, export control issues, and public and private financing. As a member of Congress active in advancing the development of nanotechnology, I will make great use of the conclusions the authors reach and the recommendations they make as I work with my colleagues on crafting future nanotechnology policy."
-U.S. Representative Mike Honda (CA)
member, House of Representatives Committee on Science

"Chapter by chapter, this book provides comprehensive discussions of the forces that drive the business of nanotechnology today, providing invaluable assistance in avoiding the pitfalls that await start-ups and long-standing corporations alike. It captures the journey we've been through these last few years, and offers the lessons we've learned to those who follow. Every new CEO or CFO of a high-tech company will find this book an invaluable resource."
-John H. Belk, Boeing Technology Ventures, Phantom Works
Chairman, Nanotechnology Steering Committee

"Miller and his colleagues haveattempted a Herculean task and have succeeded with great aplomb. The chapters on FDA review, EPA regulations, and export controls are particularly valuable and not easily accessible elsewhere. Value creation in a nanotech firm is all about intellectual property, and Miller's team excels in this area. The authors are also very adroit at putting a spin on business issues as they specifically apply to nanotech."
-David E. Reisner, PhD, President & CEO of The Nano Group(TM), Inc.
its subsidiaries, Inframat(R) Corp. and US Nanocorp(R), Inc.

"This is the first book to offer in-depth coverage of business, legal, and policy issues for the field of nanotechnology. It is a great resource for anyone seeking to read about the early leaders in nanotechnology business, as well as an authoritative guide for navigating the maze of legal and policy issues facing emerging nanotechnology enterprises."
-Stephen Maebius, Partner at law firm of Foley & Lardner
Leader of the Nanotechnology Industry Team