This work examines the endeavours of the Arabian Peninsula States – namely the Gulf Cooperation Council member States of Bahrain, Kuwait, Oman, Qatar Saudi Arabia and the UAE, as well as Jordan and Yemen as prospective GCC members – in establishing national intellectual property protection regimes which both meet their international treaty obligations and are also congruent with their domestic policy objectives. It uses the WTO’s TRIPS Agreement of 1995 as the universal benchmark against which the region’s laws are assessed. The challenges faced by the States in enforcing their intellectual property laws receive particular attention. Protecting Intellectual Property in the Arabian Peninsula considers the changing nature of the States’ intellectual property laws since 1995. It argues that the decade immediately following the TRIPS Agreement was marked by a period of foreign forces shaping or influencing the character of the States’ intellectual property legislative regimes, primarily through multilateral or bilateral trade-based agreements. The second and current decade, however, see a significant shift away from foreign influences and a move towards domestic and regional imperatives and initiatives taking over. The work also examines regional initiatives for the protection of traditional knowledge and cultural heritage, as areas of intellectual property which fall outside the parameters of the TRIPS Agreement, but which are of significant concern to the States and other developing countries, and to which they are giving increasing attention in terms of providing proper protection.

This book looks at the development of intellectual property rights in Bahrain, Kuwait, Oman, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, and the United Arab Emirates, in the context of their WTO memberships and consequent compliance with the TRIPS Agreement.

There has been a deliberative, but as yet unsuccessful, attempt by scholars and policy makers to articulate a more meaningful idea of Europe, which would enhance the legitimacy of the European Union and provide the basis for a European identity. Using a detailed analysis of the writings of Nietzsche, Elbe seeks to address this problem and argues that Nietzsche's thinking about Europe can significantly illuminate our understanding. He demonstrates how Nietzsche's critique of nationalism and the notion of the 'good European' can assist contemporary scholars in the quest for a vision of Europe and a definition of what it means to be a European citizen.

Patents, including pharmaceutical patents, enjoy extended protection for twenty years under the TRIPs Agreement. The Agreement has resulted in creating a two-tier system of the World Trade Organisation Member States, and its implementation has seen the price of pharmaceutical products skyrocket, putting essential medicines beyond the reach of the common man. The hardest hit populations come from the developing and least developed countries, which have either a weak healthcare system or no healthcare at all, where access to essential and affordable medicines is extremely difficult to achieve. Pharmaceutical Patent Protection and World Trade Law studies the problems faced by these countries in obtaining access to affordable medicines for their citizens in light of the TRIPS Agreement. It explores the opportunities that are still open for some developing countries to utilise the flexibilities available under the TRIPS Agreement in order to mitigate the damage caused by it. The book also examines the interrelationship between the world governing bodies, and the right to health contained in some of the developing country’s national constitutions.

Covering the intellectual property protection regimes of the Gulf Cooperation Council member states, Bahrain, Kuwait, Oman, Qatar, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates, the book also includes discussion of Yemen and Jordan as possible future members of the Gulf Cooperation Council.

Despite the apparent advantages of the internet, there is little debate that it facilitates intellectual property infringements, including infringements of trade mark rights. Infringers not only remain hidden by the anonymity the internet provides but also take advantage of its increasing reach and the associated challenges with regard to cross-border enforcement of rights. These factors, among others, have rendered the internet a growing source of counterfeit and other infringing products. It has, therefore, become necessary for right holders to shift their focus from individual infringers to internet intermediaries, such as Internet Service Providers (ISPs), hosts and navigation providers, which are responsible in numerous ways for making content promoting infringements available to internet users. In light of these developments, this book conducts a comprehensive analysis of the liability of such intermediaries for trade mark infringements and considers the associated issues and challenges in the diverging approaches under which liability may be imposed. At present, however, neither UK trade mark law nor English common-law principles relating to accessorial liability provide a basis to hold internet intermediaries liable for trade mark infringements. As such, this book considers approaches adopted in some of the Continental European countries and the US in order to propose reforms aimed at addressing gaps in the existing legal framework. This book also examines alternative remedies, such as notice and takedown and injunctions, and discusses the associated shortcomings of each of these remedies.

There has been little or no study on trademark laws in Asia on a cross-jurisdictional level. This book aims at filling the existing gap and provides a comprehensive overview of trademark laws of eight major Asian jurisdictions and their most-updated trademark case law. The book analyses six of the principal issues that best reflect Asian features in trademark law and trademark development. The cases in the book are principally the most authoritative decisions, usually the first to deal with certain new emerging issues, or the first to apply particular statutory provisions in the respective jurisdiction. Also included are a small number of direction-changing, outlying or even controversial decisions. Each case report is divided into six sections: summary, legal context, facts, reasoning of the court, legal analysis, and commercial or industrial significance. Readers will find this book useful in both its overview of the legal context and how those cases are to be interpreted legally and commercially.

Copyright law regulates creativity. It affects the way people create works of authorship ex-ante and affects the status of works of authorship significantly ex-post. But does copyright law really understand creativity? Should legal theories alone inform our regulation of the creative process? This book views copyright law as a law of creativity. It asks whether copyright law understands authorship as other creativity studies fields do. It considers whether copyright law should incorporate non-legal theories, and if so, how it should be adjusted in their light. For this purpose, the book focuses on one of the many rights that copyright law regulates – the right to make a derivative work. A work is considered derivative when it is based on one or more preexisting works. Today, the owner of a work of authorship has the exclusive right to make derivative works based on her original work or to allow others to do so. The book suggests a new way to think about both the right, the tension, and copyright law at large. It proposes relying on non-legal fields like cognitive psychology and genre theories, and offers new legal-theoretical justifications for the right to make derivative works. As the first book to consider the intersection between copyright law, creativity and derivative works, this will be a valuable resource for students, scholars, and practitioners interested in intellectual property and copyright law.

This book considers a new approach to online copyright infringement. Rather than looking at the subject within a purely technological context, it provides legal analysis from a human perspective. This book highlights that there are three key instances in which the capacity of a human mind intersects with the development of copyright regulation: (1) the development of copyright statutory law; (2) the interpretation of the copyright statutory law the judiciary; and (3) human interaction with new technology. Using a novel framework for constructing digital perspectives, the author, Dr Hayleigh Bosher, analyses the laws relating to online copyright infringement. She provides insights into why the law appears as it does, shedding light on the circumstances of how it came to pass and demonstrates a clear malfunction in the interpretation and application of copyright law to online activities that derives from the disconnect between the technological and the human perspectives. The book proposes putting the human element back into copyright analysis to enable the return of reason where it has been lost, and provide a clearer, more consistent and fair legal regulation of online copyright infringement. Law, Technology and Cognition: The Human Element in Online Copyright Infringement will be of interest to students, academics, researchers, as well as practitioners.

This book is a very useful reference guide on how de jure and de facto standards are being developed and how these standards compete against each other. The book also looks at how FRAND commitments are being determined across countries, how these disputes have played out, especially in Asia, and how they can be better dealt with in future globally. The book gives a broad overview of the business model of dominant SEP patentees and analyzes some standards for FRAND licensing of SEPs which are converging in major Asian jurisdictions. It highlights the need for ex ante regulation in the FRAND licensing of SEPs and suggests how we can reconcile conflicts which may arise from different legal standards. This book provides detailed and comprehensive analysis of recent SEP cases with an emphasis on Asia and will interest anyone who wishes to have more insight into the legal, policy, industrial and economic implications of such issues.