During the past century, intellectual property (IP) law has expanded within and beyond national borders. The field of IP law was once a niche area concerning authors, inventors, and trademark owners. Today, IP law acts as a complex regime of instruments, institutions, and actors that negotiate overlapping, diverging, and occasionally competing public policies on a global scale. As IP continues to expand beyond borders, the instruments and tools utilised for its global protection rely on public international law as the common denominator and unifying frame. Intellectual Property Ordering Beyond Borders provides an evaluation of the most pertinent public international law questions raised by this multidimensional expansion. This comprehensive and far-reaching volume tackles problems such as generalist approaches under the law of treaties; custom and general principles; interfaces between IP and other normative orders, such as trade and investment; and interdisciplinary accounts from the economic, political, and social science perspectives. This title is also available as open access on Cambridge Core.

This book examines intellectual property (IP) protection in the broader context of international law. Against the background of the debate about norm relations within and between different rule systems in international law, it construes a holistic view of international IP law as an integral part of the international legal system. The first part sets out the theoretical foundation for such a holistic view by offering several methodological frameworks for the analysis of norm relations in international law. These frameworks allow for different ways to conceptualise the linkages amongst international IP rules and those to other areas of international law. Part two then considers norm relations within the international IP system. It analyses the relationship of the two main IP conventions to the World Trade Organisation (WTO) Agreement on Trade Related Aspects of International Property Rights (TRIPS), as well as the relationship between TRIPS and Free Trade Agreements (FTAs). The third part discusses alternative rule systems for the protection of IP in international law: the intellectual creations element of IP is captured by the concept of creator's rights in international human rights law; while the property aspect of IP is protected by international investment agreements as well as European human rights treaties. Part four focuses on three core intersections between the international IP system and other areas of international law related to environmental, social and economic concerns. The areas examined concern international law on trade, biological diversity and climate change. As in part three, the perspective taken is that of the 'other' area and how it perceives its relations with international IP norms. In part five finally, the focus shifts back to the international IP system and the mechanisms it provides for taking into account the interests protected in other areas of international law.

In recent decades, foreign direct investment (FDI) has played an increasingly significant role in world economic activity and development. In economic terms, the accumulated stock of FDI and its generation of commercial activity by foreign affiliates have made FDI comparatively more important than international trade in goods and services. At the same time, the globalization of markets and the development of consumer brands in many domestic markets has brought an increasingly international approach to the management, and value, of intellectual property (IP) rights. IP Rights have therefore become increasingly enmeshed with international investment and the subject of transnational disputes as evidenced by cases that concern, inter alia, various limitations for trademarks used on tobacco packaging, or the invalidation of pharmaceutical patents by domestic courts. FDI is increasingly involved with the exploitation of IP which underpins highly valued products and services and this has shifted the balance of return on FDI from physical to intellectual property. Thus, IP rights have never been more economically and politically important or controversial than they are today. There have long been international treaties that protect IP, but in recent years other international treaties have come into being that protect IP rights along with other property rights. These treaties include various international investment agreements (IIAs), which regard IP rights as a protected investment. This book analyses the standards of treatment and protection enshrined in IIAs for IP rights and their relationship to the key international treaties in IP Rights, with reference to topics such as the fragmentation of international law; investor-host-state dispute resolution; investors and investments; relative standards of treatment (such as most favoured nation); absolute standards of treatment (such as fair and equitable treatment); and expropriation. The work fills the significant gaps left by the comparably small amount of intellectual property related ISDS case-law. As IP Rights are a more recent concern in FDI, many questions regarding the relevance of IIA for IP rights are yet to be decided by investment tribunals. To assist the practitioner in understanding how IP Rights will be treated in investment disputes, the work sets out a number of hypothetical cases based on actual cases decided by other adjudicating bodies in different legal contexts, such the European Court of Human Rights or the European Court of Justice and the work also engages with the issues and applicable law for disputes involving IP Rights arising from the actions relating to Philip Morris trademarks in Australia and Uruguay, and Eli Lilly.