As knowledge production has become a more salient part of the economy, intellectual property laws have expanded. From a backwater of specialists in patent, copyright, and trademark law, intellectual property has become linked to trade through successive international agreements, and appreciated as key to both economic and cultural development. Furthermore, law has begun to engage the interest of economists, political theorists, and human rights advocates. However, because each discipline sees intellectual property in its own way, legal scholarship and practice have diverged, and the debate over intellectual property law has become fragmented. This book is aimed at bringing this diverse scholarship and practice together. It examines intellectual property through successive lenses (incentive theory, trade, development, culture, and human rights) and ends with a discussion of whether and how these fragmented views can be reconciled and integrated.

As knowledge production has become a more salient part of the economy, intellectual property laws have expanded. From a backwater of specialists in patent, copyright, and trademark law, intellectual property has become linked to trade through successive international agreements, and appreciated as key to both economic and cultural development. Furthermore, law has begun to engage the interest of economists, political theorists, and human rights advocates. However, because each discipline sees intellectual property in its own way, legal scholarship and practice have diverged, and the debate over intellectual property law has become fragmented. This book is aimed at bringing this diverse scholarship and practice together. It examines intellectual property through successive lenses (incentive theory, trade, development, culture, and human rights) and ends with a discussion of whether and how these fragmented views can be reconciled and integrated.

Intellectual Property at the Edge addresses both newly formed intellectual property rights and those which have lurked on the fringes, unadmitted to the established IP canon. It provides a basis for studying and discussing the history of these emerging rights as well as their relationship to new technological opportunities and to the changing importance of innovation and creative production in the global economy. In addition to addressing the scope of new rights, it also focuses on new limitations to patent, copyright and trademark rights that spring from similar changes. All of these developments are examined comparatively: for each new development, scholars in two jurisdictions analyse the evolving legal norm. In several instances, the first of the paired authors writes from the perspective of the legal system in which the doctrine emerged, and the second addresses its reception in her jurisdiction.

We live in an age in which expressive, informational, and technological subject matter are becoming increasingly important. Intellectual property is the primary means by which the law seeks to regulate such subject matter. It aims to promote innovation and creativity, and in doing so to support solutions to global environmental and health problems, as well as freedom of expression and democracy. It also seeks to stimulate economic growth and competition, accounting for its centrality to EU Internal Market and international trade and development policies. Additionally, it is of enormous and increasing importance to business. As a result there is a substantial and ever-growing interest in intellectual property law across all spheres of industry and social policy, including an interest in its legal principles, its social and normative foundations, and its place and operation in the political economy. This handbook written by leading academics and practitioners from the field of intellectual property law, and suitable for both a specialist legal readership and an intelligent but non-specialist legal and non-legal readership, provides a comprehensive account of the following areas: - The foundations of IP law, including its emergence and development in different jurisdictions and regions; - The substantive rules and principles of IP; and - Important issues arising from the existence and operation of IP in the political economy.