How Intellectual Property Serves or Resists New Technologies?

Dear Colleagues,

In recent years, things happen at a much quicker pace than it has previously. Cheaper multiplications of copies were possible since the advent of digital technologies, which also boosted a fast cross-border circulation of materials. Then, quicker production of elaborated outcomes is possible thanks to artificial intelligence systems, which are nowadays more and more present next to sophisticated software. New investments are increasingly made in decentralized ledgers, which are the technology used for cryptocurrency and non-fungible tokens.

These phenomena raise many different questions. One of those is how legal instruments that have been designed before all this happened can resist them. Intellectual Property Rights (IPRs) were introduced in times that did not know digital technologies, artificial intelligence, or blockchains. However, among the justifications of IPRs, the theory of incentives for enhancing creativity and innovation may be closely connected with the development of the disruptive abovementioned technologies. Some IPRs are designed for protecting technological tools under specific conditions; some others may be used for protecting the output of such technological tools. In any case, the digital realm first, and the metaverse then, are providing additional room for the protection of brands via trademarks (among others).

At the same time, digital technologies facilitate collaborations and collective intelligence. In other words, they facilitated the evolution of social practices and creativity or innovation processes, which currently, are often based on sharing initiatives. These last ones seem in contrast to exclusive rights.

This Special Issue aims to host papers discussing how IPRs serve or resist the technological and social evolutions in times of climate changes, political and societal crisis and instabilities.

Papers submitted will be peer-reviewed. They should not exceed 20,000 words in length including text, footnotes, and other accompanying material. and shall be sent on a rolling basis until September 1st to [email protected] or [email protected].

We look forward to your participation in this Special Issue.

Dr. Cristiana Sappa
Guest Editor

Manuscript Submission Information

Manuscripts should be submitted online at www.mdpi.com by registering and logging in to this website. Once you are registered, click here to go to the submission form. Manuscripts can be submitted until the deadline. All submissions that pass pre-check are peer-reviewed. Accepted papers will be published continuously in the journal (as soon as accepted) and will be listed together on the special issue website. Research articles, review articles as well as short communications are invited. For planned papers, a title and short abstract (about 100 words) can be sent to the Editorial Office for announcement on this website.

Submitted manuscripts should not have been published previously, nor be under consideration for publication elsewhere (except conference proceedings papers). All manuscripts are thoroughly refereed through a double-blind peer-review process. A guide for authors and other relevant information for submission of manuscripts is available on the Instructions for Authors page. Laws is an international peer-reviewed open access semimonthly journal published by MDPI.

Please visit the Instructions for Authors page before submitting a manuscript. The Article Processing Charge (APC) for publication in this open access journal is 1400 CHF (Swiss Francs). Submitted papers should be well formatted and use good English. Authors may use MDPI's English editing service prior to publication or during author revisions.

• IPRs
• digital transformation
• metaverse
• blockchain
• NFT
• artificial intelligence