A Critique Of The Ontology Of Intellectual Property Law

Download or read book A Critique of the Ontology of Intellectual Property Law written by Alexander Peukert and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2021-05-20 with total page 219 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Intellectual property (IP) law operates with the ontological assumption that immaterial goods such as works, inventions, and designs exist, and that these abstract types can be owned like a piece of land. Alexander Peukert provides a comprehensive critique of this paradigm, showing that the abstract IP object is a speech-based construct, which first crystalised in the eighteenth century. He highlights the theoretical flaws of metaphysical object ontology and introduces John Searle's social ontology as a more plausible approach to the subject matter of IP. On this basis, he proposes an IP theory under which IP rights provide their holders with an exclusive privilege to use reproducible 'Master Artefacts.' Such a legal-realist IP theory, Peukert argues, is both descriptively and prescriptively superior to the prevailing paradigm of the abstract IP object. This work was originally published in German and was translated by Gill Mertens.

Download or read book Intellectual Commons and the Law written by Antonios Broumas and published by University of Westminster Press. This book was released on 2020-11-25 with total page 223 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: ‘With clarity and sophistication, Antonios Broumas presents a bold new theory of intellectual commons and powerful arguments for a new body of supportive law. This book not only reveals the misleading logic of intellectual property law in our time; it reveals the rich possibilities for constructive change that legally protected commoning can bring. Highly recommended!’ — David Bollier, Director, Reinventing the Commons Program, Schumacher Center for a New Economics. ‘Liberating the Intellectual Commons from the fetters of capital accumulation and appropriation, would give us a renaissance of creative energies and empowered communities: exactly what the world needs to move away from the social and ecological devastations of our times. This book is a thoughtful and compelling argument for making this possible through the works of the law and the redesign of public domain as a common space.’ — Massimo De Angelis, Professor of Political Economy and Social Change, Co-director of the Centre for Social Justice and Change, University of East London. ‘In this pioneering book, Antonios Broumas argues that philosophically, morally, politically and economically we are in urgent need of a new legal regime that recognizes the intellectual commons, peer production and sharing as the primary practices of intellectual production, distribution and consumption. I cannot imagine a more urgent task today. A legally protected intellectual commons will lead to greater scientific and cultural innovation and creativity and will lead to an urgently needed second Enlightenment. This book should be read by lawyers, critical theorists, economists and the many professionals of science, culture and the academy.’ — Costas Douzinas, Professor of Law, Birkbeck, University of London. ‘Antonios Broumas’ book is an excellent critical analysis of the cultural commons and a must-read for everyone interested in understanding what the commons, the cultural commons, and the digital commons are all about. This work brilliantly outlines the foundations of an empirically grounded critical theory of the commons and the cultural commons in the context of the interactions of law and society.’ — Christian Fuchs, Professor of Media and Communication Studies, author of Communication and Capitalism: A Critical Theory (2020). ‘Broumas takes us on a spellbinding tour of how and why the law could and should change to accommodate the creative multitude, which engages into an emerging mode of production. He tells a vibrant story that makes us shout: “Lawmakers of the world, unite!”’ — Vasilis Kostakis, Professor of P2P Governance, Tallinn University of Technology, Faculty Associate at Harvard Law School. At the cutting edge of contemporary wealth creation people form self-governed communities of collaborative innovation in conditions of relative equipotency and produce resources with free access to all. The emergent intellectual commons have the potential to commonify intellectual production and distribution, unleash human creativity through collaboration and democratise innovation with wider positive effects for our societies. Contemporary intellectual property laws fail to address this potential. We are, therefore, in pressing need of an institutional alternative beyond the inherent limitations of intellectual property law. This book offers an overall analysis of the moral significance of the intellectual commons and outlines appropriate modes for their regulation. Its principal thesis is that our legal systems are in need of an independent body of law for the protection and promotion of the intellectual commons, in parallel to intellectual property law. In this context, the author of the book proposes the reconstruction of the doctrine of the public domain and the exceptions and limitations of exclusive intellectual property rights into an intellectual commons law, which will underpin a vibrant non-commercial zone of creativity and innovation in intellectual production, distribution and consumption alongside commodity markets enabled by intellectual property law.

Download or read book Adventures in Childhood: Volume 60 written by Jose Bellido and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2022-07-14 with total page 331 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Adventures in Childhood connects modern intellectual property law and practice with a history of consumption. Structured in a loosely chronological order, the book begins with the creation of a children's literature market, a Christmas market, and moves through character merchandising, syndicated newspaper strips, film, television, and cross-industry relations, finishing in the 1970s, by which time professional identities and legal practices had stabilized. By focusing on the rise of child-targeted commercial activities, the book is able to reflect on how and why intellectual property rights became a defining feature of 20th century culture. Chapters trace the commercial empires that grew around Alice in Wonderland, Peter Rabbit, Meccano, Felix the Cat, Mickey Mouse, Peter Pan, Eagle Magazine, Davy Crockett, Mr Men, Dr Who, The Magic Roundabout and The Wombles to show how modern intellectual property merchandising was plagued with legal and moral questions that exposed the tension between exploitation and innocence.

Download or read book IP Accidents written by Patrick R. Goold and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2022-03-17 with total page 153 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In the twenty-first century, it has become easy to break IP law accidentally. The challenges presented by orphan works, independent invention or IP trolls are merely examples of a much more fundamental problem: IP accidents. This book argues that IP law ought to govern accidental infringement much like tort law governs other types of accidents. In particular, the accidental infringer ought to be liable in IP law only when their conduct was negligent. The current strict liability approach to IP infringement was appropriate in the nineteenth century, when IP accidents were far less frequent. But in the Information Age, where accidents are increasingly common, efficiency, equity, and fairness support the reform of IP to a negligence regime. Patrick R. Goold provides the most coherent explanation of how property and tort interact within the field of IP, contributing to a clearer understanding of property and tort law and private law generally.

Download or read book Negotiating Copyright in the American Theatre: 1856–1951 written by Brent S. Salter and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2022-01-06 with total page 279 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Drawing on fascinating archival discoveries from the past two centuries, Brent Salter shows how copyright has been negotiated in the American theatre. Who controls the space between authors and audiences? Does copyright law actually protect playwrights and help them make a living? At the center of these negotiations are mediating businesses with extraordinary power that rapidly evolved from the mid-nineteenth to mid-twentieth centuries: agents, publishers, producers, labor associations, administrators, accountants, lawyers, government bureaucrats, and film studio executives. As these mediators asserted authority over creativity, creators organized to respond, through collective minimum contracts, informal guild expectations, and professional norms, to protect their presumed rights as authors. This institutional, relational, legal, and business history of the entertainment history in America illuminates both the historical context and the present law. An innovative new kind of intellectual property history, the book maps the relations between the different players from the ground up.

Download or read book The Subject of Copyright written by Ewa Laskowska-Litak and published by Taylor & Francis. This book was released on 2023-09-22 with total page 213 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Exploring the concept of copyright subject matter through the lenses of law, aesthetics, and cognitive science, this book describes the historical evolution of a work into an artefact that qualifies as copyrightable subject matter. Discussing the originality requirement towards an artefactual understating of intangible goods, copyright’s present struggles with modern societies and technologies, and growing inequalities between rights holders and producers, the book adopts an interdisciplinary approach based on studies in law, aesthetics, neuroscience, and cognitive science to present a novel perspective on the non-artefactual and contextual identification of copyright subject matter. The book examines the challenges raised by aesthetic and neuroaesthetic concepts and cognitive studies, seeking to create a unifying framework of identification strategies for modern copyright law which embrace historical, philosophical, and social perspectives; the book develops a research methodology that offers a new interdisciplinary and holistic approach for understanding the subject of copyright and better addressing the needs of modern society, technology and business models. Touching on normative understandings of creativity and legal-philosophical, aesthetic, and cognitive considerations with regard to the idea/expression dichotomy in copyright law, the book will be of immense interest to legal scholars, legal philosophers, aestheticians, and neuroaestheticians.

Download or read book Intangible Intangibles written by Brad Sherman and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2024-04-30 with total page 303 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book takes as its starting point recent debates over the dematerialisation of subject matter which have arisen because of changes in information technology, molecular biology, and related fields that produced a subject matter with no obvious material form or trace. Arguing against the idea that dematerialisation is a uniquely twenty-first century problem, this book looks at three situations where US patent law has already dealt with a dematerialised subject matter: nineteenth century chemical inventions, computer-related inventions in the 1970s, and biological subject matter across the twentieth century. In looking at what we can learn from these historical accounts about how the law responded to a dematerialised subject matter and the role that science and technology played in that process, this book provides a history of patentable subject matter in the United States. This title is available as Open Access on Cambridge Core.