The International Intellectual Property System: Commentary and Materials

The 1990s will be remembered as an era of prodigious expansion in world trade. Suddenly - for reasons encompassing irresistible new on-line technology, a vastly greater geographic reach, - the old intellectual property (IP) laws and protocols long respected by international business became woefully inadequate. As a result, this one-volume introduction to the new global regime of IP law has been written. The text provides business lawyers everywhere with the organized materials and expert commentary they need to protect IP rights on a global scale - and provides law students with an authoritative annotated survey of the relevant conventions, treaties, and laws both regional and national, as well as significant court interpretations in various jurisdictions. The book offers in-depth analysis of: current international norms in the fields of patent, copyright, and trademark rights; national and most favored treatment in the granting of IP rights; regulation of IP rights in the European Union (EU); enforcement under international legal instruments as well as under EU and US laws; and such emerging areas as governance of IP rights on the Internet and in electronic commerce.