Taiwan is facing a GI conundrum, symptoms of which are conceptual confusion between GIs and trademarks, the perennial overhaul of the GI registration system and the structural collapse between IP and non-IP law. Taiwan’s situation epitomises the inherent difficulty of accommodating GIs under the general framework of IP. IP is a generic title for patents, copyright, and trademarks and so forth. There are two characteristics shared by the various forms of IP, namely, the intangibility of subject matter and the negativity of the rights granted. IP is a form of government intervention in the economy designed to correct market failures. While patents and copyright are designed to overcome the public good problem, the justification for trademarks involves information asymmetry. Taking a doctrinal, international and comparative approach and using economic theory, the thesis analyses the difficulties of accommodating GIs under the IP framework as manifested in the TRIPS Agreement, which establishes GIs as a form of IP, and its two implementing paradigms, namely, the US trademark paradigm and the EU sui generis paradigm. The TRIPS GI provisions are anomalous in the IP framework. The US paradigm represents efforts to subsume GIs under existing trademark law. These efforts result in theoretical uncertainties because of the inherent incompatibility between the concept of GIs and trademarks. The EU paradigm establishes GIs as a separate category of IP, which represents a deviation from established IP system.

Chapter I: The relationship between inventor and the Patent Office is modelled as a 'patent regulation game' and it is shown that the conventional wisdom that the P.O. always maximizes welfare by playing the Stackelberg leader is incorrect. Other solution concepts are explored and it is found that, because of the patent life constraint, a reversal of roles may be beneficial. The result that social welfare can be maximized by the P.O. being a Stackelberg follower survives (albeit for a narrower range of values of the key parameters) even if the P.O.-leader is endowed with the additional instrument of a compulsory royalty rate. Chapter II: A new twist is added to the debate on the Schumpeterian competition hypothesis, by considering the structure of the final-product market as a policy Instrument, set by the Patent Office by manipulating patentability standards. It is found that for a vast range of demand functions and under constant returns to scale, a patentability standard that allows for more than one patent to be granted within a given product/process class is welfare superior to the monopoly-generating first-past-the-post current system. If patent life is beyond the P.O.'s control and/or there are increasing returns, no patentability standard is unambiguously preferable. Chapter III: When Research and Development are modelled as two analytically distinct stages, the choice between patentability standards (whether to grant patents to research prototypes or to fully-developed products) is shown to affect the allocation of resources between Research and Development. It is shown that under a single-patent regime, granting patents to research prototypes is unambiguously welfare-improving, whereas under a multiple-patent regime a change to patents being granted to fully-developed products and the attending increase in market uncertainty may raise welfare. Chapter IV: The economics of the 'integer constraint' is analysed and it is found that proper treatment of the indivisibility of firms may reverse the qualitative conclusions of interger-unconstrained models. As an example, a product quality oligopoly model is examined and it is shown that not only the Chamberlinian excess entry result does not apply but also that a free-entry oligopoly and a socially managed industry may produce goods of identical quality, irrespective of the values of cross-derivatives deemed crucial in the literature. Moreover, the integer constraint is shown to provide an explanation for a positive correlation between profitability and concentration in a Cournot oligopoly model with free entry.

This thesis examines the 1914 House of Lords decision in Kreglinger v New Patagonia Meat & Cold Storage Co Ltd, a decision which represented a shift in the legal doctrine known as the equity of redemption. It suggests that explanations of the decision which have been given hitherto are unsatisfactory. It therefore presents an explanation for the change in legal doctrine that is located in the broad context of the changing property interests of those sections of the community with which the doctrine was most closely associated in the nineteenth century. Part I discusses some methodological problems which this thesis encounters. It also examines the concept of property as expounded by a select number of major western intellectual theorists on the subject. This part also contains a critical examination and rejection of the two main theorists of classical Marxism who have discussed the relation between law and property. The first part of Part II (chapters 5 - 10) outlines the legal development that culminated in Kreglinger, and rejects the legal reasoning that is used to achieve the decision. The chapters suggest that the major legal reasons given in the decision to support the result are unsatisfactory, and that though there are reasons that the case itself fails to examine which might have been given to provide a better basis for - 3 - the decision, these reasons are also, in the final analysis, insufficient to justify the decision. The penultimate chapter then suggests that as the legal arguments used in the decision are not coherent, it is necessary to search for reasons outside the law to explain the change in the equity of redemption. This chapter indicates that the landholding section of society, on whose behalf the doctrine had originally been developed, had undergone an important, though slow, change in attitude to their lands. The equity of redemption had been associated with the desire of landowners to retain their landed estates, the property which they valued above all else, almost in spite of the cost. But during the nineteenth century, in particular, landowners gradually decided that the sacrifices that became necessary in order to do so were no longer acceptable. By the end of the nineteenth century, many landowners were willing to dispose of their landed estates (where they could do so). They had become concerned to protect a financial asset, rather than try to keep their land no matter what the cost. It is suggested that the dev~lopment from land as a special privileged form of wealth, as an asset to be valued in non-commercial terms, to land treated as just another form of financial asset, is a change of attitude that helps explain the development of the equity of redemption as set out in Kreglinger. The property of landowners had become capital, and this was reluctantly recognised by both landowners and judiciary. The classic equity of redemption was therefore of less importance for the class it was supposed to benefit and it is this development which explains the change in legal doctrine.

The purpose of this thesis is to test the ability of Iraqi law to protect right holders of computer programs and the programs themselves. Comparison is made between Iraq’s Author’s Right Act 1971, as amended in 2004, and English law- especially Copyright, Designs, and Patent Act 1988, as amended. Examining the effectiveness of the rules in both laws for protecting CPs entails four main areas: the nature and legal status of computer programs, the scope of copyright protection guaranteed for computer programs by the legislation, other legal ways of protecting programs and harmonisation between European Union copyright laws and Iraqi author right law. The methodology is mainly doctrinal /comparative. Accordingly, this study has been divided into six chapters. Chapter One contains the general introduction and covers the main features for Iraq as a developing country and the study’s background; its importance, aims and goals, and methodology. Chapter Two examines the nature and legal status of computer programs. Many questions are raised in relation to their nature: are computer programs tangible or intangible things? goods, services, or something else? Should property subsist and if so which kind of property, if programs do not fit recognised kinds of private property, can they be deemed a sui generis? Finally, evaluation the ability of “property” as a way to protect the investment of CPs in Iraq. Chapter Three, test the provisions of copyright and author’s right in English law, Iraqi law and references other laws - US, French, and Egyptian. Iraqi law and the UK law deem computer programs to be a literary works, protected by author’s right/copyright. Iraqi law has started to be consistent with the WTO and TRIPs Agreement. Questions arise regarding the sufficiency of copyright/author’s right to protect computer programs. If not adequate, would other methods provide preferable protection? Chapter Four examines other techniques for protection: patents, contractual terms, trade secret law and trade marks. Chapter Five aims to make harmony between Iraqi laws, international laws and European Directives, to link Iraq with the communities which preceded it in the area of intellectual property. As well as legislation, there is scope for judicial harmonisation using s1 (3) of Iraqi Civil Code. Finally, Chapter Six presents the main results and conclusions and makes recommendations as to for improving the current legal situation.

A patent is a limited monopoly granted to an inventor by the state in return for the disclosure of new useful inventions. While the rights of patentees are protected and rewarded through royalties and licensing fees, for example, other enterprising bodies can develop new industries for the benefit of the public. Thus, the patent system has always been considered to be in a delicate position in serving both the rights of inventors and the interests of the public. However, in examining the relationship between scientists and the patent system in Britain between 1860 and 1960, it appears neither the rights of inventors nor the interests of the public were foremost in the actual operation of the patent system. On the contrary, the empirical evidence gathered in this thesis suggests that the British patent system had actually become a conservative and self-serving system, perpetuating the interests of its own practitioners - patent agents, lawyers, and judges. At the outset, the thesis questions a common perception that "British scientific tradition" discourages scientists from taking out patents, by showing that British chemists have a long and uninterrupted patenting tradition, and that it was often the British patent system itself that actually hindered scientists from taking out patents. Furthermore, the resistance to patenting generated by occupational conflict between the medical profession and chemists exacerbated the difficulty of patenting for British scientists. The thesis illustrates how British chemists experienced consistent difficulty with the British patent system. The chemists' patenting activity took place in the contexts of the emergence of the science-based chemical industry starting from the mid-nineteenth century characterised by the industrialisation and internationalisation of inventions, which consequently gave the patent system a key role in protecting the industry. While the rise of the new science-based chemical industry saw chemists play a crucial role in inventing new products and processes, the patent system, which was supposed to protect these new science-based chemical inventions, was slow to change in the face of entrenched legal interests and political and economic doctrine. It emerges from this study that patents and the patent system played at least as much of a role in the "decline" of the British chemical industry as the oft-cited lack of research, manufacturing, management and marketing investments in the British science-based chemical industry itself. The significance of these historical discussions for current patent reform in science is considered.

No description available.

The aims of substantive intellectual property laws and a balance between interested parties can only be achieved through appropriate procedures. Most miscarriages of justice occur procedurally. However the literature on the role of criminal IP procedures is comprehensively slight. The thesis, by a former judge assistant at both the Court of First Instance and the Court of Appeal in Irbid, Jordan, tackles issues related to enforcement of intellectual property rights and their connection to human rights. It considers the rights of the immediate parties involved, third parties, and the general public interest. It examines the role of Euro-Med Association Agreements in general and that between the EU, its member states and Jordan relevant to intellectual property and human rights. Despite the narrow interpretation of WTO/TRIPs by some commentators, it is argued that TRIPs requires that criminal as well as civil procedures be fair and equitable. The elements of a fair trial are analysed in the context of IP proceedings, comparisons being made between procedural safeguards available in Jordan and the UK (especially England and Wales) jurisdictions which have historical ties. Obligations between states at the international and regional level are analysed, along with their implications at the national level in the UK and Jordan, linked to the EU through the Euro-Med Association Agreement with Jordan. The international human rights instruments provide a common framework in accordance with TRIPs provisions interpreted could bridge the gaps that may arise between the British and Jordanian Jurisdictions. The thesis uses doctrinal comparative and qualitative methods to examine these issues and also the relation between criminal and other methods of enforcement - civil and administrative. Use of criminal procedures may significantly reduce the costs of lengthy civil litigation, and be in the public interest and the interest of all parties. Finally, recommendations are made for Jordan mainly.

The purpose of this study is to examine intellectual property (IP) protection for nanotechnology, comparing the laws of Malaysia with those of the United Kingdom (as a member of the European Union and European Patent Convention). As well as analysing current primary and secondary legal sources, a small number of discrete interviews were conducted with key nanotechnology scientists in Malaysia and the United Kingdom to ascertain the nature and development of nanotechnology in the jurisdictions under study and to explore the experts’ perceptions of IP laws, including the pattern of protection that might be expected as the technology matures. This study argues that current intellectual property rights are appropriate to govern nanotechnology creations, so that there is no need to devise a new form of IP right for nanotechnology. The emphasis in the IP literature to date has been on patent law, but this study argues that the law of breach of confidence is also very significant, despite difficulties presented by the technology. Furthermore, from qualitative empirical and doctrinal evidence, other forms of IP protection may be applicable to some extent. This study also investigates the current term protection of different forms of IP which may be relevant to nanotechnology, including the possible application of Supplementary Protection Certificates to allow for the time taken by nanotechnology products to enter the market. Finally, some recommendations are made for both Malaysia and the United Kingdom to protect nanotechnology appropriately.

The objective of this thesis is to analyse the very real and practical difficulties faced by lawyers in applying the tort private international law (PIL) rules to the internet and to investigate which factors, technology-related or otherwise, either assist or hinder the application of the PIL rules to the internet. These practical difficulties arise from the fact that many of the basic provisions of PIL relate to physical world (or offline) elements such as domicile, nationality and place of damage or harmful event (locus delicti). Effective application of PIL rules is dependent on sovereign competence operating within clear jurisdictional borders. As a consequence, difficulties arise for conflicts lawyers as the internet often disregards borders. Ubiquitous torts, such as unauthorised peer-to-peer (P2P) file-sharing affecting copyright works and online defamation have become commonplace in the online world.

No description available.