Intellectual property law is built on constitutional foundations and is underpinned by the twin freedoms of freedom of expression and freedom of economic enterprise. In this thoughtful evaluation, Gustavo Ghidini offers up a reconstruction of the core features of each intellectual property paradigm, including patents, copyright, and trademarks, suggesting measures for reform to allow intellectual property to become socially beneficial for all.
This open access edited book captures the complexities and conflicts arising at the interface of intellectual property rights (IPR) and competition law. To do so, it discusses four specific themes: (a) policies governing functioning of standard setting organizations (SSOs), transparency and incentivising future innovation; (b) issue of royalties for standard essential patents (SEPs) and related disputes; (c) due process principles, procedural fairness and best practices in competition law; and (d) coherence of patent policies and consonance with competition law to support innovation in new technologies. Many countries have formulated policies and re-oriented their economies to foster technological innovation as it is seen as a major source of economic growth. At the same time, there have been tensions between patent laws and competition laws, despite the fact that both are intended to enhance consumer welfare. In this regard, licensing of SEPs has been debated extensively, although in most instances, innovators and implementers successfully negotiate licensing of SEPs. However, there have been instances where disagreements on royalty base and royalty rates, terms of licensing, bundling of patents in licenses, pooling of licenses have arisen, and this has resulted in a surge of litigation in various jurisdictions and also drawn the attention of competition/anti-trust regulators. Further, a lingering lack of consensus among scholars, industry experts and regulators regarding solutions and techniques that are apposite in these matters across jurisdictions has added to the confusion. This book looks at the processes adopted by the competition/anti-trust regulators to apply the principles of due process and procedural fairness in investigating abuse of dominance cases against innovators.
This book is the result of the PhD project I started four years ago at Europa-Kolleg Hamburg. I had the great opportunity to work on it for one year at the European University Institute in Florence and to finalise the oeuvre during my stay with the European Commission's Institute for Prospective Technological Studies in Seville. The subject matter of the book is intellectual property rights, patents in particular, and their process of harmonisation in Europe. At the beginning of the work, the intention was not to focus immediately on one narrow field in the huge realm of intellectual property rights but rather to open my mind in order to capture a broad variety of new ideas and concepts in the book. The work at three different institutes in three different European countries over the period of four years naturally exposed the work to diverging ideas and the exchange of views with many people. This is one reason for the wide spread of topics ordered around the given leitmotif, such as epistemological foundations, political background information,. the protection of biotechnological inventions and the building up process of intellectual property right systems in the countries of Central and Eastern Europe. In chapter two I take up Polanyi's differentiation of codifiable and tacit knowledge. Applying these concepts to my own work I realise that this book is only the visible and codified part of knowledge I was able to capture.
This study has emerged from an ongoing program of trilateral cooperation between WHO, WTO and WIPO. It responds to an increasing demand, particularly in developing countries, for strengthened capacity for informed policy-making in areas of intersection between health, trade and IP, focusing on access to and innovation of medicines and other medical technologies.
Competition Law and Policy in the EU --Article 101(1) --Article 101(3) --Market Definition --Cartels --Non-Covert Horizontal Cooperation --Vertical Agreements Affecting Distribution or Supply --Merger Control --Intellectual Property Rights --Article 102 --The Competition Rules and the Acts of Member States --Sectoral Regimes --Enforcement and Procedure --Fines for Substantive Infringements --The Enforcement of the Competition Rules by National Competition Authorities --Litigating Infringements in National Courts --State Aids.
The series of papers in this publication were commissioned from renowned international economists from all regions. They review the existing empirical literature on six selected themes relating to the economics of intellectual property, identify the key research questions, point out research gaps and explore possible avenues for future research.
As intellectual property has grown in importance, the interaction between antitrust law and intellectual property has developed into a crucial part of the legal landscape. This new text is the first casebook expressly designed for a course on the intersection of intellectual property and antitrust law or for an advanced seminar on intellectual property misuse. It may also be suitable for supplemental use in a course on intellectual property, licensing, or litigation. Written by a professor who has worked in both the antitrust and intellectual property fields for over two decades, the casebook addresses both the rights of authors and inventors and the interest of society in promoting competition, expanding its base of knowledge, improving technology, and protecting consumer welfare.
The fast-evolving relationship between the promotion of welfare-enhancing competition and the balanced protection of intellectual property (IP) rights has attracted the attention of policymakers, analysts and scholars. This interest is inevitable in an environment that lays ever greater emphasis on the management of knowledge and innovation and on mechanisms to ensure that the public derives the expected social and economic benefits from this innovation and the spread of knowledge. This book looks at the positive linkage between IP and competition in jurisdictions around the world, surveying developments and policy issues from an international and comparative perspective. It includes analysis of key doctrinal and policy issues by leading academics and practitioners from around the globe and a cutting-edge survey of related developments across both developed and developing economies. It also situates current policy developments at the national level in the context of multilateral developments, at WIPO, WTO and elsewhere.
