Intellectual Property

Dear Colleagues

This Special Issue is devoted to examining how intellectual property laws interact with other forms of legal regulation.  In thinking about intellectual property rights, we often focus, in isolation, on the substantive law dealing with copyright, patent, trade marks, designs and trade secrets or else concern ourselves with the procedural mechanisms for enforcement of such rights.  What tends to be neglected is the relationship of intellectual property to other areas of law, including contract, tax, corporate, data protection, freedom of information, employment, consumer, human rights and criminal law. Exploring this interaction enables us to see whether the goals of intellectual property law are potentially thwarted by other forms of regulation (e.g. via contract law); or whether they are reinforced by them (e.g. through human rights and criminal law). Alternatively, it may be that that other areas of law (e.g. freedom of information) are potentially disrupted by intellectual property regulation. Further, and perhaps most importantly, how we generate innovations and cultural content, allocate the ownership of intellectual property rights and exploit intangible creations may be heavily influenced and shaped by corporate, tax, data protection/privacy and employment regimes in a particular jurisdiction and yet this impact is often overlooked.

This Special Issue will examine the interplay between intellectual property law and other fields of law at domestic, regional and international levels.  Jurisdiction specific as well as comparative analyses will be featured.  The articles will be readable by a broad legal audience and not limited to a single jurisdiction.

Prof. Tanya Aplin
Guest Editor

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