Summary
Contents
Subject index
Formally, ownership of ideas is legally impossible, and can never be globally secured. Yet, in very real and significant ways these limits have been undone. In principle, ideas cannot be owned, yet, undoing the distinction between ideas and tangible manifestations, the distinction which underpins the principle, allows the principle to hold even whilst its meaning is hollowed out. Post–Cold War global network capitalism is premised upon regulatory structures designed to enforce deregulation in global markets and production, but at the same time to enforce global regulation of property and intellectual property in particular. However, this roll–out has not been without resistance and limitations. Globalization, the affordances of digital networks, and contradiction within capitalism itself – between private property and free markets – promote and undo global IP expansion. In this book David and Halbert map the rise of global IP protectionism, debunk the key justifications given for IPRs, dismiss the arguments put forward for global extension and harmonization; and suggest that roll–back, suspension, and even simply the bi–passing of IP in practice offer better solutions for promoting innovation and meeting human needs.
Patents and Traditional Knowledge
Patents and Traditional Knowledge
The WIPO defines a patent as ‘an exclusive right’ granted for an invention, which is a product or a process that provides, in general, a new way of doing something, or offers a new technical solution to a problem. To get a patent technical information about the invention must be disclosed to the public in a patent application (http://www.wipo.int/patents/en/). TRIPS sets as its minimum standards that patentable subject matter must be ‘new, inventive and capable of industrial application’ (Leong 2014, 665). As these definitions suggest, a patent can cover a product, which is the outcome of the invention, or the patent can cover the process of doing something, often known as a business method patent. Patents can ...
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