A Patent is an official paper guaranteeing an inventor and his heirs, exclusive rights over an invention, process, idea, etc., for a given length of time. Learn how to protect your intellectual property, you invention or idea, with a Patent. This step-by-step instruction guide is set up in a concise, readable, easy to understand format. If you are thinking of Doing-It- Yourself or getting outside help, you need to know the process, so your interests are protected. Also included with this i...

Do copyright laws directly cause people to create works they otherwise wouldn't create? Do those laws directly put substantial amounts of money into authors' pockets? Does culture depend on copyright? Are copyright laws a key driver of competitiveness and of the knowledge economy? These are the key questions William Patry addresses in How to Fix Copyright. We all share the goals of increasing creative works, ensuring authors can make a decent living, furthering culture and competi...

Writers, musicians, filmmakers, gamers, lawyers and academics talk about why copyright matters to them – or doesn't.We expect to be able to log on and read, watch or listen to anything, anywhere, anytime. Then copy it, share it, quote it, sample it, remix it.Does this leave writers, designers, filmmakers, musicians, photographers, artists, and software and game developers with any rights at all? Have we forgotten how to pay for content? Are big corporations...

Today's copyright wars can seem unprecedented. Sparked by the digital revolution that has made copyright—and its violation—a part of everyday life, fights over intellectual property have pitted creators, Hollywood, and governments against consumers, pirates, Silicon Valley, and open-access advocates. But while the digital generation can be forgiven for thinking the dispute between, for example, the publishing industry and Google is completely new, the copyright wars in fact stretch back th...

This book offers an original analysis of private copying and determines its actual scope as an area of end-user freedom. The basis of this examination is Article 5(2)(b) of the Copyright Directive. Despite the fact that copying for private and non-commercial use is permitted by virtue of this article and the national laws that implemented it, there is no mandate that this privilege should not be technologically or contractually restricted. Because the legal nature of private copying is not...

An understanding of the changing nature of the law and practice of copyright infringement is a task too big for lawyers alone; it requires additional inputs from economists, historians, technologists, sociologists, cultural theorists and criminologists. Where is the boundary to be drawn between illegal imitation and legal inspiration? Would the answer be different for creators, artists and experts from different disciplines or fields? How have concepts of copyright infringement altered ove...

In the summer of 2012, the Supreme Court of Canada issued rulings on five copyright cases in a single day. The cases represent a seismic shift in Canadian copyright law, with the Court providing an unequivocal affirmation that copyright exceptions such as fair dealing should be treated as users’ rights, while emphasizing the need for a technology neutral approach to copyright law. The Court’s decisions, which were quickly dubbed the “copyright pentalogy,” included no fees for song previews...

In recent years the intellectual property protection afforded to works of art has received increased attention from artists, museums, galleries, auction houses, publishers and their professional staff and legal advisers, as well as from those teaching or studying copyright and/or the law of cultural property. This was the first text to examine in detail the intellectual property rights protecting artistic works and artists' rights generally in the United Kingdom. First published in 2001, A...

This book examines the relationship between the legal extension of copyright duration as an enduring means of copyright protection and the growth of the UK book publishing industry as a typical creative industry reliant on copyright. The book draws on Schumpeter’s theory of creative destruction to analyse the implications of copyright law and policy on the book industry and illustrate the dynamic interaction between copyright expansion and the growth of the creative industries. The book re...

This book examines intellectual property (IP) protection in the broader context of international law. Against the background of the debate about norm relations within and between different rule systems in international law, it construes a holistic view of international IP law as an integral part of the international legal system. The first part sets out the theoretical foundation for such a holistic view by offering several methodological frameworks for the analysis of norm relations in in...

Copyrights are rights to copy, distribute, display and perform creative works. They are one of the basic forms of intellectual property.This text discusses copyright law as it applies in the United States. This concise presentation necessarily omits a number of important provisions of a very complex area of law.