The Making of Modern Intellectual Property Law

by Brad Sherman , Lionel Bently

• ISBN13: 9780521563635
• ISBN10: 0521563631
• Format: Hardcover
• Copyright: 1999-07-28
• Publisher: Cambridge University Press

Summary

One of the common themes in recent public debate has been the law’s inability to accommodate the new ways of creating, distributing and replicating intellectual products. In this book the authors argue that in order to understand many of the problems currently confronting the law, it is necessary to understand its past. This is its first detailed historical account. In this book the authors explore two related themes. First, they explain why intellectual property law came to take its now familiar shape with sub-categories of patents, copyright, designs and trade marks. Secondly, the authors set out to explain how it is that the law grants property status to intangibles. In doing so they explore the rise and fall of creativity as an organising concept in intellectual property law, the mimetic nature of intellectual property law and the important role that the registration process plays in shaping intangible property.

Table of Contents

Acknowledgments	ix	(1)
List of abbreviations	x	(3)
Table of statutes and bills	xiii	(5)
Tables of cases	xviii
1 Introduction	1	(8)
Part 1 Towards a property in intangibles	9	(52)
1 Property in mental labour	11	(32)
2 The mentality of intangible property	43	(18)
Part 2 The emergence of modern intellectual property law	61	(34)
3 Designing the law	63	(14)
4 Managing the legal boundaries	77	(18)
Part 3 Towards an intellectual property law	95	(64)
5 Crystallisation of the categories	101	(28)
6 Completing the framework	129	(12)
7 Explanations for the shape of intellectual property law	141	(18)
Part 4 Transformations in intellectual property law	159	(62)
8 Changes in the framework	161	(12)
9 From creation to object	173	(21)
10 Closure and its consequences	194	(11)
11 Remembering and forgetting	205	(16)
Bibliography	221	(16)
Index	237