Law Commons^™

China's Role In Well-Known Marks Protection: It's Now Or Never...Or Dilution, Ava Farshidi

Ava Farshidi

Infringement over the transliteration, converting text to another script, of well-known marks is a major problem for foreign companies in China. If a multinational company does not create its own Chinese transliteration, the Chinese public may create one, which will ultimately affect the company’s ownership of the mark in a different language. Although China became a member of both the Paris Convention for the Protection of Intellectual Property (“Paris Convention”) and the agreement on Trade-Related Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights (“TRIPS”), China has adopted laws that directly conflict with these international guidelines for well-known marks, which has paved the way …

Decoding Bollywood’S Royalty-Sharing Conundrum, Pralika Jain

Pralika Jain

India’s film making community and business got „industry‟ status only in 2011. However, unlike major industries such as telecom and pharmaceutical, the film industry (popularly known as “Bollywood”) is characterised by a major lack of legal rules and institutions to administer them, the problem being most acute in respect of artists. Consequently, the industry is governed completely by market forces whose successful players wield nearly all the bargaining power. It’s almost baffling that a film industry which is currently worlds second in terms of revenue is so thinly regulated.

Copyright And Inequality, Lea Shaver

Lea Shaver

The prevailing theory of copyright law imagines a marketplace efficiently serving up new works to an undifferentiated world of consumers. Yet the reality is that all consumers are not equal. The majority of the world’s people experience copyright law not as a boon to consumer choice, but as a barrier to acquiring knowledge and taking part in cultural life. The resulting patterns of privilege and disadvantage, moreover, reinforce and perpetuate preexisting social divides. Class and culture combine to explain who wins, and who loses, from copyright protection. Along the dimension of class, the insight is that just because new works …

The Evolution Of The Digital Millennium Copyright Act; Changing Interpretations Of The Dmca And Future Implications For Copyright Holders, Hillary A. Henderson

Hillary A Henderson

Copyright law rewards an artificial monopoly to individual authors for their creations. This reward is based on the belief that, by granting authors the exclusive right to reproduce their works, they receive an incentive and means to create, which in turn advances the welfare of the general public by “promoting the progress of science and useful arts.” Copyright protection subsists . . . in original works of authorship fixed in any tangible medium of expression, now known or later developed, from which they can be perceived, reproduced, or otherwise communicated, either directly or with the aid of a machine or …

An Empirical Study: A Socio-Legal Approach To Gauging Attitudes To Intellectual Property Rights, Faris K. Nesheiwat, Mike Adcock

Ferris K Nesheiwat

This article seeks to provide a socio-legal framework for the examination of the attitude of a section of the Jordanian public towards intellectual property rights (IPRs), using copyright protected software as an example; it provides an overview of perceptions of IPRs within an Arabic and predominantly Muslim society, and examines how such perceptions impact attitudes towards abiding with, and enforcement of, IPRs. Through its analytical value and empirical research, this paper fills a void in the availability of reliable empirical data in Jordan as part of the analysis to gauge the impact of intellectual property (IP) laws. A review of …

Anticipating The Storm: Predicting And Preventing Global Technology Conflicts, Sabrina Safrin

Sabrina Safrin

This article helps lay the foundation for a new field of international law — International Law and Technology — and opens novel avenues of inquiry in law and technology and intellectual property more broadly. It analyzes as a starting point why some technologies generate global conflicts while others do not. Technologies that face international resistance can trigger a barrage of international legal responses, ranging from trade bans and WTO disputes to international regulatory regimes and barriers to patenting. Agricultural biotechnology triggered all of these legal flashpoints, while the cellphone, a technology that grew up alongside it, triggered none. Why?

Understanding …

Trips & Development, Daniel J. Gervais

Daniel J Gervais

This brief Chapter in the (forthcoming) SAGE Handbook of Intellectual Property examines available data and analyses concerning the impact of the Agreement on Trade-Related Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights (TRIPS) on development. The Chapter considers distinctions among types of countries and industries, and the role of the World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO).