Recently, many political voices have indicated a strong desire to track down absent fathers who have absconded without fulfilling child support obligations to their biological or adopted children. This renewed interest in deadbeat dads has resulted from a recognition that the social welfare programs, which pick up the tab for abandoned children, are contributing significantly to an ever-increasing federal budget deficit. Meanwhile, in a large number of cases, there simply isn't enough money for an absent parent to maintain his own separate support and fulfill the support obligations that the law requires. This book explores the history, reforms, and consequences of child support in America. The authors have included case studies as well as discussions on the psychological consequences of separating families, effects of divorce laws on the award of child support, contested paternity, and child custody alternatives. They conclude with a discussion on economic responsibility and the deadbeat epidemic. The book is intended to empower the larger number of parents who are caught in the midst of overworked agencies, discouraging tales, and the lack of information that keeps them paralyzed from acting on their own behalf.

'This book fills a gap in IP law. There are many publications on substantive and procedural law in IP litigation. But it was impossible to find a book that addresses the role of the judiciary in IP like this one does. It provides unique insights into the matter from a variety of angles. It brings together editors and authors from the bench, the bar and academia coming from all over Europe, the US and Japan. This book is a must-have for everyone who has an interest in international IP litigation.' - Klaus Grabinski, Justice, Federal Court of Justice (Bundesgerichtshof), Germany 'This volume makes an important contribution to our understanding of the contours of intellectual property protection through a critical examination of the global trend to adjudicate IP disputes in specialized courts. The editors have assembled an extraordinary group of scholars, practitioners and judges to compare their experiences with various adjudicatory structures.' - Rochelle Dreyfuss, New York University, School of Law, US Intellectual Property and the Judiciary examines the role of judges in the development, interpretation, and application of intellectual property (IP) law and norms. In this regard, the authors engage in a comparative analysis of various national, European and international court systems while also exploring the competing and complementary roles of legislators and executive actors. Each chapter seeks to capture the comparative institutional advantages of government bodies within existing legal frameworks as well as offering a thorough examination of both the common law and civil law traditions in the context of judicial treatment of IP. The result is a series of proposals relating to the architecture of judiciaries and the functional role of judges with the goal of optimally positioning jurists to address complex issues and advance IP doctrine and policy. Featuring high-level authors from both academia and practice, the book will be of great interest to academic researchers and practicing lawyers who have a focus on IP. It will be of particular value to those who are engaged in the rapidly changing enforcement environment of intellectual property rights. Contributors include: V. Cassiers, M. Ekvad, S. Frankel, C. Geiger, D. Gervais, S. Granata, J. Griffiths, E. Izyumenko, T. Kandeva, S. Lugienbuehl, B. Lynn, S. Martin, C. Mulder, M.O. Muller, C. Nard, K. O'Malley, C.S. Petersen, A. Plomer, J. Schovsbo, X. Seuba, A. Strowel, T. Takenaka, A. von Muhlendahl, G. Wurtenberger, P. Yu

With the proliferation of Internet access, e-commerce systems are increasingly important as a new and effective method to distribute, transact, and exploit digital multimedia content. With the growth of multimedia content, management and protection become a critical issue, creating a need for digital rights management systems. Digital Rights Management for E-Commerce Systems highlights innovative technologies used for the design and implementation of advanced e-commerce systems facilitating digital rights management and protection. Through comprehensive coverage of the full range of technological, legal, and social issues related to digital rights management, this authoritative scholarly work provides researchers, practitioners, and students with a complete understanding of the most critical concerns of today's digital content industry.

Readings in Law and Popular Culture is the first book to bring together high quality research, with an emphasis on context, from key researchers working at the cutting-edge of both law and cultural disciplines.

Fascinating and varied, the volume crosses many boundaries, dealing with areas as diverse as football-based computer games, Buffy the Vampire Slayer, digital sampling in the music industry, the films of Sidney Lumet, football hooliganism, and Enid Blyton. These topics are linked together through the key thread of the role of, or the absence of, law - therefore providing a snapshot of significant work in the burgeoning field of law and popular culture.

Including important theoretical and truly innovative, relevant material, this contemporary text will enliven and inform a legal audience, and will also appeal to a much broader readership of people interested in this highly topical area.

Consumers routinely enter into long-term contracts with providers of goods and services - from credit cards, mortgages, cell phones, insurance, TV, and internet services to household appliances, theatre and sports events, health clubs, magazine subscriptions, transportation, and more. Across these consumer markets certain design features of contracts are recurrent, and puzzling. Why do sellers design contracts to provide short-term benefits and impose long-term costs? Why are low introductory prices so common? Why are the contracts themselves so complex, with numerous fees and interest rates, tariffs and penalties?
Seduction by Contract explains how consumer contracts emerge from the interaction between market forces and consumer psychology. Consumers are short-sighted and optimistic, so sellers compete to offer short-term benefits, while imposing long-term costs. Consumers are imperfectly rational, so sellers hide the true costs of products and services in complex contracts. Consumers are seduced by contracts that increase perceived benefits, without actually providing more benefits, and decrease perceived costs, without actually reducing the costs that consumers ultimately bear.
Competition does not help this behavioural market failure. It may even exacerbate it. Sellers, operating in a competitive market, have no choice but to align contract design with the psychology of consumers. A high-road seller who offers what she knows to be the best contract will lose business to the low-road seller who offers what the consumer mistakenly believes to be the best contract. Put bluntly, competition forces sellers to exploit the biases and misperceptions of their customers.
Seduction by Contract argues that better legal policy can help consumers and enhance market efficiency. Disclosure mandates provide a promising avenue for regulatory intervention. Simple, aggregate disclosures can help consumers make better choices. Comprehensive disclosures can facilitate the work of intermediaries, enabling them to better advise consumers. Effective disclosure would expose the seductive nature of consumer contracts and, as a result, reduce sellers' incentives to write inefficient contracts.
Developing its explanation through a general framework and detailed case studies of three major consumer markets (credit cards, mortgages, and cell phones), Seduction by Contract is an accessible introduction to the law and economics of consumer contracts, and a powerful critique of current regulatory policy.

First published in 1992. Routledge is an imprint of Taylor & Francis, an informa company.

First published in 2005. Routledge is an imprint of Taylor & Francis, an informa company.

First published in 2005. Routledge is an imprint of Taylor & Francis, an informa company.

International Intellectual Property: A Handbook of Contemporary Research aims to provide researchers and practitioners of international intellectual property law with the necessary tools to understand the latest debates in this incredibly dynamic and complex field. The book combines doctrinal analysis with ground-breaking theoretical research by many of the most recognized experts in the field. At its core, it offers overviews of the structure and content of the two instruments that can undoubtedly be considered historically as the most important intellectual property treaties, namely the Berne Convention on the Protection of Literary and Artistic Works and the Paris Convention on the Protection of Industrial Property. Several chapters also discuss parts of the TRIPS Agreement. This important book will prove a valuable resource for students and academics of international intellectual property wishing to obtain useful knowledge of current issues such as conflicts between intellectual property (especially patents and trademark) rights, geographical indications, protection of luxury brands, orphan works and innovation. Contributors: P. Baechtold, I. Calboli, K. de la Durantaye, G.B. Dinwoodie, R.C. Dreyfus, S. Frankel, C. Geiger, D.J. Gervais, J. Ginsburg, S.F. Halabi, E.F. Judge, T. Miyamoto, C.A.M. Mulder, L.P. Ramsey, S. Ricketson, G.R. Scott, M. Senftleben, H. Sun, P.K. Yu

This invaluable book, for the first time, brings together the international and European Union legal framework on cultural property law and the restitution of cultural property. Drawing on the author?s extensive experience of international disputes, it provides a very comprehensive and useful commentary.Theories of cultural nationalism and cultural internationalism and their founding principles are explored. Irini Stamatoudi also draws on soft law sources, ethics, morality, public feeling and the role of international organisations to create a complete picture of the principles and trends emerging today.This book will be highly useful to academics, postgraduate students, practitioners and policy makers in the field of cultural heritage or cultural property law. It will also be of great interest to those researching in the areas of museum studies or cultural diplomacy.

This book examines the nature of pre-contractual liability in English and French law and the extent to which the arguments of risk determine the imposition of liability during the negotiation process. The book is divided into three parts. Dr Giliker first examines potential contractual liability, followed by a study of liability outside contract, namely in the fast-growing law of restitution, "enrichissement sans cause, tort, delict and the equitable doctrine of estoppel. The final part deals with proposals for reform and draws a number of conclusions, highlighting, in particular, the policy influences on the law. Drawing on her extensive knowledge of both systems, Dr Giliker reviews the relevant legal authority and academic literature in this field, focusing on the difficult, but practically important, question of liability for services performed in anticipation of a contract. The book offers a comprehensive picture of the current legal position in England and France and a fresh perspective on this commercially significant area of law, which is likely to be of relevance to anyone interested in this area of law or in obligations law in general.

First published in 2005. Routledge is an imprint of Taylor & Francis, an informa company.

The foundations of tort law differ considerably in the various European legal systems. For a number of years a group of tort law experts, the European Group on Tort Law, has been engaged in a systematic examination of the fundamental questions of tort law with a view to formulating principles which will contribute to a "common law of Europe". Although the work has been centred on Europe, it has been informed by contributors from a number of overseas systems. This is the ninth volume in a series setting out the results of the work of the Group: earlier volumes have covered matters such as wrongfulness, causation, contributory negligence and liability for others In this volume, the authors provide an overview of the law governing multiple tortfeasors (the situation where the victim of a tort contends that more than one person is responsible for an injury suffered by him) seen from the angle of fifteen legal systems. The law has two aspects: the "external" one relating to the relationship between the victim and the tortfeasors, particularly the question of how far each is liable to the victim for the whole damage; and the "internal" relationship of the tortfeasors, raising issues of recourse inter se. Each country report consists of an account of the theoretical basis of the law in this area, together with an examination of its operation via a variety of factual situations. There is also a comparative report which summarizes the most important elements identified by the country reports and identifies the existing common ground. This volume provides the legal scholar and the practitioner with a wealth of information and insights on a complex and controversial area of law in an accessible form.

First published in 2005. Routledge is an imprint of Taylor & Francis, an informa company.

Over the years, photographs have enjoyed a variety of forms of protection, but traditionally the protection of photographs has been placed within the law of copyright. While photography as a technique has been around for 150 years, protection issues in photography, as in copyright in general, have been complicated by the advent of new technology, enabling the digital storage, alteration, and reproduction of images and facilitating their global dissemination via the Internet. Until now, very little has been written in English about the protection of photographs. This work provides an overview of the law and history of photograph protection in 16 jurisdictions. Each country chapter provides a survey of the major issues of photographic protection, broken down for easy reference into eight sections: definition, originality, authorship and ownership, term of protection, economic rights, moral rights, contracts and the relationship of copyright with privacy and publicity rights. This book should be of interest to anyone concerned about the discrepancies within the copyright protection scheme in an age of increasing globalization. In particular, it should be useful for copyright lawyers, collecting societies, photographers, photograph agencies and publishers seeking clear information about the copyright implications of photographs.

First published in 2005. Routledge is an imprint of Taylor & Francis, an informa company.

The rule of lex specialis serves as an interpretative method to determine which of two contesting norms should be used to govern. In this book, the lex specialis label is broadly applied to intellectual property and connects a series of questions: What is the scope of intellectual property law? What is the relationship between intellectual property law and general legal principles? To what extent are intellectual property laws exceptional?Intellectual property assumes a prominent social and economic role worldwide and considering the costs and benefits of treating it separately from general principles of law is a salient area of enquiry. This thought-provoking book addresses the essence of intellectual property law and the role of intellectual property within broader legal institutions. Expert contributors explore lines of enquiry from a variety of more general perspectives and engage with and contribute to an area of law that is too significant socially and commercially to be considered only by specialists. Intellectual Property and General Legal Principles is a challenging book which scholars in intellectual property law will find a discerning contribution to their field. Contributors: A. Brown, I. Calboli, G. D'Agostino, G.B. Dinwoodie, S. Dusollier, B. Garrison, G. Ghidini, B. Hazucha, T.B. Larsen, H-C. Liu, C.R. McManis, C. Ncube, B.G. Otero, C. Waelde, T. Watabe, K. Weatherall

First published in 2005. Routledge is an imprint of Taylor & Francis, an informa company.

Although much has been written about the history of copyright and authorship in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, very little attention has been given to the impact of the development of other kinds of intellectual property on the ways in which writers viewed their work in this period. This book is the first to suggest that the fierce debates over patent law and the discussion of invention and inventors in popular texts during the nineteenth century informed the parallel debate over the professional status of authors. The book examines the shared rhetoric surrounding the creation of the 'inventor' and the 'author' in the debate of the 1830s, and the challenge of the emerging technologies of mass production to traditional ideas of art and industry is addressed in a chapter on authorship at the Great Exhibition of 1851. Subsequent chapters show how novelists Charles Dickens, Elizabeth Gaskell, and George Eliot participated in debates over the value and ownership of labour in the 1850s, such as patent reform and the controversy over married women's property. The book shows the ways in which these were reflected in their novels. It also suggests that the publication of those novels, and the celebrity of their authors, had a substantial effect on the subsequent direction of these debates. The final chapter shows that Thomas Hardy's later fiction reflects an important shift in thinking about creativity and ownership towards the end of the century. Patent Inventions argues that Victorian writers used the novel not just to reflect, but also to challenge received notions of intellectual ownership and responsibility. It ends by suggesting that detailed study of the debate over intellectual property in the nineteenth century leads to a better understanding of the complex negotiations over the bounds of selfhood and social responsibility in the period.

Explore legal issues that often hinder the work of child welfare practitioners! Child Welfare in the Legal Setting: A Critical and Interpretive Perspective is a revolutionary study of the child welfare system that is essential for practitioners, educators, and students interested in public child welfare work. It examines the legal system surrounding child welfare workers and highlights their need for agency-specific training. This insightful book challenges the traditional rules of child welfare and paves the way for alternate methods of conceptualizing and organizing child protection. It explores why many family interventions fail and others never even occur. By identifying incongruities between the philosophy of child welfare and its function, this book advocates a more individualistic and efficient technique for assisting clients. Addressing issues and challenges from the initial identification of problems to navigating the legal system, this book is also thorough enough for public child welfare workers who want to take their skills to the next level. The large-system perspective in this book uses the concentric circle model, the rational legal model of legal and court action, and the ritualized process model to examine child welfare practice. Learn why terms such as child abuse and neglect have become social constructions that vary depending on the values of social workers, judges, attorneys, agencies, and communities. Child Welfare in the Legal Setting: A Critical and Interpretive Perspective examines the standardization of the organizational activities of child welfare systems and how this limits professionals' ability to accurately recognize unique problems and intervene in the most beneficial manner. Child Welfare in the Legal Setting also provides controversial opinions on emerging issues including: family investigations sanction for Child Protective Services intervention the legal setting as a host environment the function of the child welfare system rationalization of child welfare intervention trained incapacity of social workers Title IVE programs the court system Child Welfare in the Legal Setting: A Critical and Interpretive Perspective identifies vital issues by analyzing the ethical and moral foundations of the child welfare system. This insightful book also takes a close look at how practitioners inadvertently devalue their clients by using language that creates stigmatized social categories such as victim and convicted felon. Supervisors, managers, social workers and child welfare practitioners will benefit from this information. The vignettes that supplement the narrative also make the book an important resource in any child welfare course.

First published in 2005. Routledge is an imprint of Taylor & Francis, an informa company.

First published in 2004. Routledge is an imprint of Taylor & Francis, an informa company.

First published in 2004. Routledge is an imprint of Taylor & Francis, an informa company.

At head of title: Commission of the European Communiites.