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, and sheer volume of goods and services -- the old intellectual property (IP) laws and protocols long respected by international business became woefully inadequate. As a result, this masterful one-volume introduction to the new global regime of IP law fills an urgent need. Immediately recognized as the landmark work in its field, The International Intellectual Property System gives business lawyers everywhere 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 + such emerging areas as governance of IP rights on the Internet and in electronic commerce.

`What has long been needed is a one-volume introduction to the multiple layers of the international intellectual property system, and in particular an exposition about the role that the World Trade Organization and the Agreement on Trade-Related Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights (TRIPS) will play in this system. With the publication of The International Intellectual Property System , this gap has at long last been filled'. Pamela Samuelson Professor of Information Management and of Law, University of California at Berkeley