Subjects:

Intellectual Property Law

Contents:

Chapter 1 - Death of a Patent System - Introduction, Peter Drahos, Australian National University, Canberra

Chapter 2 - Schrodinger's Cat: An Observation on Modern Patent Law, Dr Margaret Llewelyn, Reader in Intellectual Property Law, and Deputy Director, Sheffield Institute for Biotechnology Law and Ethics (SIBLE), University of Sheffield

Chapter 3 - A Neuropsychological Analysis of the Law of Obviousness, Lachlan S. James, Innovation Capital, Sydney Australia

Chapter 4 - On Proprietary Rights and Personal Liberties: Constitutional Responses to Post-Industrial Patenting, John R Thomas, Associate Professor of Law, George Washington University

Chapter 5 - Shifts in India's Policy on Intellectual Property: The Role of Ideas, Coercion and Changing Interests, Anitha Ramanna, Lecturer at the Department of Politics and Public Administration, University of Pune, India

Chapter 6 - The Ethics of Patenting - Uneasy Justifications, Sigrid Sterckx, Senior Lecturer Research Fellow, Ghent University and Part time Professor, University of Antwerp

Chapter 7 - Legal and Ethical Aspects of Bio-Patenting: Critical Analysis of EU Biotechnolgoy Directive, Geertui Van Overwalle, Dr. Iur Professor of Law at the Katholieke Universiteit Leuven and at the Universite de Liege

Chapter 8 - Is the World Ready for Substantive Patent Law Harmonisation? A lesson from History, Graham Dutfield, Herchel Smith Senior Research Fellow at Queen Mary Intellectual Property Institute

Index

National patent systems have stopped serving the ideal of public benefit. Instead the world is moving towards a universal patent system that will only make a few rich countries even richer. The various chapters in this book, written by leading scholars in the field, show how national patent systems have been compromised. Doctrinal developments in patent law no longer square with the public good.

The requirement of inventiveness in patent law no longer complements what we know about creativity and may in fact stand in the way of inventiveness and innovation. The standard moral justifications for the patent system that we now have simply do not work. The erosion of national sovereignty over the setting of patent standards means that increasingly most nation states will be hampered in their use of patents as a tool of industry policy.

Death of Patent System details these and other changes in national patent systems.