This book focuses on database law (a branch of intellectual property law) and further explores the legal protection currently available for data and data-related products in India. It offers a comparative study of the position of copyright law in protecting databases in the US and EU, while also presenting responses from the Indian database industry and its aspirations regarding the role of copyright law in database protection. India is undoubtedly leading the way as a knowledge economy. Its strengths are its information technology capability and its knowledge society, as well as its booming database industry - aspects that also necessitate the study of the role of law, as well as the protection of data and databases, in India. This book examines the growing importance of copyright law for protecting databases as well as for ensuring access in information societies. The book concludes with a discussion of key principles to be kept in mind in the context of drafting legal regimes for databases in India that will both benefit the database industry and ensure accessibility.

The long-awaited European Unitary Patent and Unified Patent Court will soon become a reality. Companies, research institutions, and individuals will be able to obtain not only a patent title with immediate effect in 25 EU Member States, but also a court decision on (for example) infringement or validity of a European or Unitary patent with effect in the participating Member States. Everybody involved in European patenting will find enormously welcome guidance in this extraordinary book. Written by two outstanding intellectual property experts - one being a lawyer who had a hand in the development of the unitary patent and the other being a reputed Belgian intellectual property judge - it describes in detail all the provisions regarding the new patent and the new court, explaining their rationales and the processes that led to them. Although the Rules of Procedure of the Unified Patent Court still need to be finalized and adopted by the Court, the authors already unravel the proposed Draft Rules of Procedure. The book uses flowcharts as well as plain words to represent each procedural stage of the Draft Rules of Procedure. In this way, a practitioner can focus on each distinct stage as required, while also gaining a comprehensive overview of the proceedings. The complex language issues arising throughout the proceedings are analysed in detail in a supplementary part.

This book discusses patent legal issues regarding inventions in the field of biotechnology. The scope of a patent is of central concern, and since biotechnology is very different from other technologies, the requirements for disclosure and infringement are in focus. Eligibility issues are touched upon, although from more of an explanatory perspective, since the law is settled in this respect. The material for the analyses includes the European practices under the EPC, those of the United Kingdom, Germany, and the US. The mandated exclusions from patentability under the European patent laws of categories of plant and animal subject matter and certain biological processes are also analysed. Claim interpretation is the common theme. The challenge has been to present a comprehensive basis for grasping the substantive law for the field of biotechnology. The book examines thoroughly the differences between practices, and the consequences of those differences for the possibility of being granted a patent for an invention, and the infringement doctrines' effects for what might be called a patent's 'after-life', i.e. the scope of its protection. As for the exclusions from patentability in Europe, the study reveals an inherent inconsistency in article 53(b) EPC, warranting an adjusted and more patent-legal understanding of the concepts. The principal message emerging in this book is the importance of relying on the policy arguments of uniformity and predictability in order to preserve a fair balance between an inventor and third parties, since in reality much of the controversy in this field turns on proper protection.

This book considers the case for modernising partnership rights in EC family reunification law. Existing Community law traditionally guarantees immigration rights only to spouses and yet there is a growing diversity of national laws on same-sex marriage, registered partnerships and recognition of cohabitation. The Community institutions which have recently framed new legislation seem to view this as a question that can be settled by political agreement with little or no outside constraint. The book challenges this assumption. The book outlines recent developments in national legal systems and traces the development of the recent Community legislation. Then, drawing on basic ECHR principles, the place of the ECHR in Community law, and on basic Community law principles of free movement and discrimination the book argues that the right of a migrant EU Citizen to family reunification for a cohabiting partner is presumptively protected and therefore justification for refusing to admit such partners must be provided. It also considers the possible justifications for marriage-partners only immigration policies and concludes that although possible, such justifications are far from certain to succeed. The discussion also tackles the question of whether judicial activism is appropriate or whether there should be judicial deference to the legislative process recently completed. The book concludes with a wider discussion of the proper response of Community law to the increasing diversity of Member States family laws and policies beyond the field of immigration rights. The book will be of value not only to immigration lawyers, but also to those interested in partnership rights generally, as well as to a wider audience of EU lawyers, primarily academics but also graduate students and practitioners.

This book offers a guide to intellectual property law in the People's Republic of China. It simplifies the complex and rather atypical judicial system and uses practical cases to demonstrate how Chinese IP law really works. The IP system is evolving rapidly in China, with the adoption of numerous new laws and regulations, more sophisticated and detailed than their predecessors. As such the book provides an up-to-date overview of the field, including legal protection and tax assessment practices in China, focusing especially on matters regarding trademark, patent and copyright law and its protection. It also covers Chinese IP in the international context, discussing all the relevant international organizations and treaties. Furthermore, by presenting the right mix of practice and theory, and examining the best-known IP infringement cases in China, it allows readers to gain an understanding of potential IP infringement risks and ways to protect their own legal rights and interests. In addition, it provides insights into the important area of valorization and fiscal management of IP in China. Based on written law and regulations as well as the authors' expertise, it is a valuable resource for foreign lawyers and foreign companies alike.

This work examines the scope of authors' rights in relation to the exploitation of their works by broadcasting, whether terrestrial or by satellite, cabling or over computer networks, in three important jurisdictions and under relevant international conventions. The analysis traces the gradual expansion of the various exclusive rights granted by copyright law in response to technological developments and puts them in their modern context, focusing on the overarching right of public performance or communication. The author argues that the advent of modern technologies, which recognize no national boundaries, necessitate the adoption of an internationally harmonized concept of "communication to the public" as the primary right applicable to the dissemination of copyright works in non-material form.

Taking the invention as its object of study, this book develops a radical new perspective on the making of modern patent law. It develops an extended historical and conceptual exploration of the invention in modern patent law. Focussing primarily on the figures that make inventions material, and on how to overcome the intangibility of ideas, this intellectual challenging book makes explicit a dimension of patent law that is not commonly found in traditional commentaries, treatises and cases. The story is told from the perspective of the material media in which the intangible form of the invention is made visible; namely, models, texts, drawings, and biological specimens. This approach brings to light for the first time some essential formative moments in the history of patent law. For example, Figures of Invention describes the central role that scale models played in the making of nineteenth-century patent jurisprudence, the largely mythical character of the nineteenth-century theory that patents texts should function as a means of disclosing inventions, and the profound conceptual changes that emerged from debates as to how to represent and disclose the first biological inventions. At the same time, this historical inquiry also reveals the basic conceptual architecture of modern patent law. The story of how inventions were represented is also the story of the formation of the modern concept of invention, or of the historical processes that shaped the terms in which patent lawyers still apprehend the intangible form of the invention. Although the analysis focuses on the history of patent law in the United States, it develops themes that illuminate the evolution of patent regimes in Europe. In combining close historical analysis with broad thematic reflection, Figures of Invention makes a distinctive contribution both to the field of patent law scholarship and to emerging interdisciplinary debates about the constitution of patent law and of intellectual property in general.

Based on the 2005 Oxford Clarendon Lectures in Law, this book deals with the remarkable change in society's attitude to homosexuality over the last half century. Until 1967 homosexual acts were punished by the criminal law and as recently as 1988 Parliament forbade teachers from suggesting that homosexuality was an acceptable family relationship. In 2005 Parliament passed the Civil Partnership Act, which creates a framework in which same-sex couples can have their relationship legally recognised in much the same way as marriage. This book looks at the essentials of the civil partnerships contruct, and asks whether it is really creating an institution of 'gay marriage'? If not, the next question to ask is whether civil partnership can satisfy the demands for equality increasingly being made by the gay community? In the United States, the courts have taken an active and progressive stance, holding that to deny marriage to same sex couples and leave them with mere partnership is to create a 'separate but equal' situation historically associated with the racial discrimination now universally recognised as unconstitutional and morally unjustifiable. However, the political climate has risen to a fever pitch with the current administration's push for constitutional amendment to ban outright gay marriage. In the UK the courts have been less activist, but the potential creation of a Supreme Court raises important questions about the boundaries between the roles of judiciary, the legislature, and government; and whether the judiciary should play a more constitutionally active role than has thus far been traditional?

Thirty years after the entry into force of the Directive on liability for defective products (Council Directive 85/374/EEC), and in the light of the threat to user safety posed by consumer goods that make use of new technologies, it is essential to assess and determine whether the Directive remains an adequate legal response to the phenomenon of products brought to market that fail to ensure appropriate levels of safety for their users.European Product Liability is the result of an extensive international research project funded by the Polish National Science Centre. It brings together experienced scholars associated with the European Group on Tort Law (EGTL) and the European Research Group on Existing EC Private Law (Acquis Group). Individual country reports analyse the implementation of the Directive in the domestic law of several EU and EEA Member States (namely Austria, Czech Republic, Denmark, England, France, Germany, Italy, Netherlands, Norway, Poland, Spain, and Switzerland) and the relationship of the implemented rules with the already existing rules of tort law. The country reports show that the practical significance of product liability differs widely in the various Member States. Also taking into account non-EU countries (Canada, Israel, South Africa and the USA), this book examines whether EU law will ensure sufficient safety for individuals using goods that have been produced using new technologies that are currently under development, such as major advances in mechatronics, nanotechnology, regenerative medicine and contour crafting. Together with an economic analysis of product liability it makes the book valuable for academics, practitioners, policy makers and all those interested in the subject.

This comparative research was triggered by the assessment of property registration law published in the World Bank Doing Business reports (DB). The international and interdisciplinary team aimed to assess how legal certainty was imagined and put in practice in French and English law, using commercial real estate as a case study. Not only this study identifies the economic impact of the law in both jurisdictions, it also looked at the practitioners functions in the dealing with commercial real estate transactions. In other words, it analyses the topical position of practitioners such as the French notaires and the role of solicitors in England. Nowadays, the profession of notaires is confronted to numerous challenges. For instance, nationality requirement for its access, has been ruled by the ECJ as contrary to the freedom of establishment and art. 49 TFEU and not justified by "the exercise of public authority".In this study, the authors argue that the actual nature and the quality of the work done by the practitioners should be considered as well as financial cost and delays. They also argue that a liberalisation of professions such as civil law notaires would have very little impact on the cost associated with doing business. As a matter of fact, both the English and the French mechanisms are very similar in their objectives and outcome even though they handle the same transaction differently, because of the culturally different relevant angles.

Intellectual Property Rights in a Networked World is a collection of recent essays offering some fresh perspectives on the scope and future of intellectual property rights. The tripartite division of the book is designed to make this interdisciplinary topic more accessible and intelligible to readers of diverse backgrounds. Part I consists of a single essay that provides a broad overview of the main themes in intellectual property scholarship, such as normative intellectual property theory and the legal infrastructure for property protection. The second section of the book presents several essays that are intended to deepen the reader's understanding of intellectual property theory and show how it can help us to grapple with the proper allocation of property rights in cyberspace. And the final section further develops the themes in Part II but in greater detail and with a more practical orientation. For the most part, the essays in this section illustrate the costs and benefits of applying property rights to cyberspace. While intellectual property rights create dynamic incentive effects, they also entail social costs, and they are sometimes in tension with the development of a robust public domain.

This kit has everything you need to plan your estate, make decisions about how to divide it, and write your own legal will. It's written by an American lawyer and is 100% legal. Creating an estate plan and writing your own will is easy. You don't have to make a complete inventory of your belongings. Just follow the step-by-step instructions in this book and use the forms to create your own will.

This volume take the reader through the legal and accounting principles that govern the valuation of assets. A crucial problem for legal, accounting, banking and venture capital professionals, it is also important to owners and managers of IP assets.

In the past few decades, scholars have offered positive, normative, and most recently, interpretive theories of contract law. These theories have proceeded primarily (indeed, necessarily) from deontological and consequentialist premises. In A Theory of Contract Law: Empirical Understandings and Moral Psychology, Professor Peter A. Alces confronts the leading interpretive theories of contract and demonstrates their interpretive doctrinal failures. Professor Alces presents the leading canonical cases that inform the extant theories of Contract law in both their historical and transactional contexts and, argues that moral psychology provides a better explanation for the contract doctrine than do alternative comprehensive interpretive approaches.

This collection is the multifaceted result of an effort to learn from those who have been educated in an American law school and who then returned to their home countries to apply the lessons of that experience in nations experiencing social, economic, governmental, and legal transition. Written by an international group of scholars and practitioners, this work provides a unique insight into the ways in which legal education impacts the legal system in the recipient's home country, addressing such topics as efforts to influence the current style of legal education in a country and the resistance faced from entrenched senior faculty and the use of U.S. legal education methods in government and private legal practice. This book will be of significant interest not only to legal educators in the United States and internationally, and to administrators of legal education policy and reform, but also to scholars seeking a more in-depth understanding of the connections between legal education and socio-political change.

Conventional wisdom holds that robust enforcement of intellectual property (IP) right suppress competition and innovation by shielding incumbents against the entry threats posed by smaller innovators. That assumption has driven mostly successful efforts to weaken US patent protections for over a decade. This book challenges that assumption. In Innovators, Firms, and Markets, Jonathan M. Barnett confronts the reigning policy consensus by analyzing the relationship between IP rights, firm organization, and market structure. Integrating tools and concepts from IP and antitrust law, institutional economics, and political science, real-world understandings of technology markets, and empirical insights from the economic history of the US patent system, Barnett provides a novel framework for IP policy analysis. His cohesive framework explains how robust enforcement of IP rights enables entrepreneurial firms, which are rich in ideas but poor in capital, to secure outside investment and form the cooperative relationships needed to transform a breakthrough innovation into a marketable product. The history of the US patent system and firms' lobbying tendencies show that weakening patent protections removes a critical tool for entrants to challenge incumbents that enjoy difficult-to-match commercialization and financing capacities. Counterintuitively, the book demonstrates that weak IP rights are often the best entry barrier the state can provide to protect entrenched incumbents against disruptive innovators. By challenging common assumptions and offering a powerful integrated framework for understanding how innovation happens and the law's role in that process, Barnett's Innovators, Firms, and Markets provides important insights into how IP law shapes our economy.

Property Rights in Land widens our understanding of property rights by looking through the lenses of social history and sociology, discussing mainstream theory of new institutional economics and the derived grand narrative of economic development. As neo-institutional development theory has become a narrative in global history and political economy, the problem of promoting global development has arisen from creating the conditions for 'good' institutions to take root in the global economy and in developing societies. Written by a collection of expert authors, the chapters delve into social processes through which property relations became institutionalized and were used in social action for the appropriation of resources and rent. This was in order to gain a better understanding of the social processes intervening between the institutionalized 'rules of the game' and their economic and social outcomes. This collection of essays is of great interest to those who study economic history, historical sociology and economic sociology, as well as Agrarian and rural history.

Patent rights depend on many interpretive elements, including even the patent's subject matter and the question of who owns the right. Such elements lead to varying legal approaches in different countries and, since it is in the nature of inventions to be international, knowledge of patent law in a variety of national jurisdictions is an indispensable asset for patent lawyers and their clients. This book provides that essential knowledge as it relates to the patent laws of Japan together with English translations of main provisions of the Patent Law. It provides a systematic and concise analysis of theoretical issues and information of practical usefulness (such as examination guidelines of the Japanese Patent Office) as well as analysis of important case law. With detailed attention to both substantive and procedural law, the author's thorough exposition covers such features of Japanese patent law as the following: requirements for patentability; provisions for invention by employee; assignment of invention before application; application of foreign language documents; limitation on effect of patents; effects of bukken (right in rem) and saiken (person-to-person claim); procedure before the Patent Office; civil remedies for infringement of patents; case law interpreting "negligence"; measures for recovery of damage to reputation; establishment of security interests; administrative law suit procedure; appellate review; and, procedure before Japan's Intellectual Property High Court. "The Essentials of Japanese Patent Law" clearly explains the way in which patents may be registered and protected under Japanese law, and will be of inestimable value to counsel for inventors and enterprises everywhere. No patent lawyers or other intellectual property professionals will want to be without it.

"Softwars: The Legal Battles for Control of the Global Software Industry" explains why the future of the computer industry depends on the nature and extent of intellectual property protection for the software that controls computer hardware. The softwars it discusses are the confrontations taking place in the courtroom, in the legislative chambers and in professional symposia around the world in which the scope of intellectual property protection for computer software is being debated and, in some cases, determined. In a highly readable and entertaining series of essays, the author explains the influences of clones, hackers, vendors of proprietary systems, vendors of open systems, software patents, copyrights and trade secrets on the evolution of the industry. No other book to date has provided either as lucid a description of the major litigation involving software protection or as cogent an analysis of the economic and strategic consequences of that litigation.

"SoftwarS" is divided into five parts, each consisting of two or more essays. In Part I, the author discusses the nature of computer programs and the history of intellectual property protection for computer programs. Part II deals with the look and feel issue; it explains what constitutes infringement of rights in screen displays and other aspects of user interfaces, and the importance of the issue. Part III concerns the practice known as reverse engineering of software; who does it, why, and what the legal and economic consequences are. In Part IV, the reader is led to the boundaries of the legal debate, where the limits of the law are being tested. Part V is the author's conclusion and prognostications for the future of the computer industry and the law. Anyone interested in the intersection of law and technology, and particularly those involved in the computer industry, will find Softwars valuable and compelling reading.

Taking as its point of departure the lapse of the Licensing Act 1662 in 1695, this book examines the lead up to the passage of the Statute of Anne 1709 and charts the movement of copyright law throughout the eighteenth century, culminating in the House of Lords decision of Donaldson v Becket (1774). The established reading of copyright's development throughout this period, from the 1709 Act to the pronouncement in Donaldson, is that it was transformed from a publisher's to an author's right; instead, legislation initially designed to regulate the marketplace of the bookseller and publisher evolved into an instrument that functioned to recognise the proprietary inevitability of an author's intellectual labours. The historical narrative which unfolds within this book presents a challenge to that accepted orthodoxy. century Britain is revealed as exhibiting the character of long-standing myth, and the centrality of the modern proprietary author as the raison d'etre of the copyright regime is displaced, being replaced with a more nuanced account of legal change driven by complex interactions between the protagonists, resulting in a copyright regime which was quite different from that anticipated by the reformers.