Although supplying spare and replacement parts and providing repair services form the basis of many legitimate businesses, many manufacturing enterprises seek to augment the competitive advantage realized at the market stage of selling their main products by attempting to monopolize the market for spares, repairs and refills. Increasingly, companies are using intellectual property laws to devise up-front business strategies to gain exclusive rights in the components of their products. This is the first in-depth analysis of the law in this relatively new and rapidly developing area of practice. It sheds clear light on the conflicting interests of manufacturers, consumers, spare parts makers and the general public; explores the extent to which this kind of business strategy can be more or less successful with respect to the different rights involved, and in different jurisdictions; and highlights the competition issues that inevitably arise. The essays included are revised and updated versions of papers presented at the seventh (2006) of the innovative IP conference organized annually by the Macau Institute of European Studies (IEEM) on intellectual property law and the economic challenges for Asia. Among the topics and issues covered are the following: <ul> ; <li> notions of ‘repair’ and ‘recycle’ and their legal effects; </li> <li> the limits of IP rights in relation to repair and recycle; </li> <li> legal limits of end user licence agreements (EULAs) and technological protection measures (TPMs); </li> <li> patent exhaustion on repair and recycling; </li> <li> alteration of product ‘identity’; </li> <li> the concept of ‘indirect’ or ‘contributory’ infringement; </li> <li> design law strategies; and </li> <li> secondary market definitions. </li> </ul> The authors give detailed attention to cases in various jurisdictions that have guided and continue to guide business strategies in the field. Jurisdictions treated include the EU, the US, the UK, Germany, the Netherlands, China, Hong Kong, Japan, and Korea. In its clarification of the limits and possibilities of business strategies in this area of competition that is just beginning to attract attention, this book will be of great value not only to intellectual property law practitioners but to business people in nearly any field of production, especially where cross-border marketing is involved.

Spares, Repairs, and Intellectual Property Rights Kluwer Law International

Christopher Heath

Anselm Kamperman Sanders

Intellectual Property

Kluwer Law International

Trade secrets and post-contractual non-compete clauses (restrictive covenants) are intrinsically linked issues when analysed in the context of past and present employment. While trade secrets have been the object of legislation in a number of major jurisdictions during the last couple of years, post-employment restrictive covenants have been left out of such legislative activity. Still, they have come under increasing scrutiny of economists and may well come into legislative focus in the near future. As the chapters of this book highlight in detail, the approach to the protection of trade secrets, the conditions under which an employer can protect trade secrets and other business interests by way of a restrictive covenant, and the scope within which former employees by using the skills and knowledge can compete with a former employer, hugely differ from jurisdiction to jurisdiction. This is not only so for the effective scope, but also for the underlying doctrinal reasons, making a country-by-country comparison difficult, and a common structure of the chapters a challenge. After all, the topic involves international law (Paris Convention, TRIPS), domestic labour law, domestic sui generis protection, and, most importantly, domestic competition and unfair competition law, a field that up to now has defied all attempts of harmonisation beyond those categories as identified by Friedrich Zoll and implemented as Art. 10bis in the Paris Convention. This book features both comparative and country-specific chapters. The latter cover the major jurisdictions of Europe and Asia, while the former provide a subject-matter analysis by taking into account legislation and case law in a global context.

Employees, Trade Secrets and Restrictive Covenants (Ieem and International Intellectual Property Law, 8)

Foreign & International Law

Wolters Kluwer

Christopher Heath is a judge at the Boards of Appeal of the European Patent Office and former researcher of the Max Planck Institute in Munich. Anselm Kamperman Sanders is Professor of Intellectual Property Law and Director of the IPKM Master’s Programme at Maastricht University, the Netherlands. About this book: Intellectual Property and International Dispute Resolution, the first in-depth treatment of the interface between intellectual property rights and international dispute resolution. The book highlights the different mechanisms of international dispute settlement, having particular regard to cases involving intellectual property law. Investor dispute tribunals, as provided for in many bilateral and multilateral trade agreements, are suspected of intransparency, because proceedings are not public, of unequal treatment, because they give foreign investors a right of action where domestic investors would have none, and of undermining democracy, because they allow democratically enacted laws to be challenged with no possibility of appeal. What’s in this book: In this important book, a number of prominent legal scholars and practitioners examine the extent to which challenges against domestic legislation based on an alleged direct or indirect expropriation of intellectual property rights may be justified. The contributions cover such aspects as: <ul>
<li>history and current practice of international dispute resolution;</li> <li>direct application of international agreements by national courts;</li> <li>comparison of investor dispute settlement tribunals with other fora such as the WTO or domestic courts for determining compliance with international intellectual property standards;</li> <li>what can be considered ‘investment’ and ‘expropriation’ in the field of intellectual property;</li> <li>legislative freedom to operate when limiting intellectual property rights, particularly in the field of health and safety; and</li> <li>how societal interests could influence future legislation in the field of intellectual property law.</li> <li>One major focus of the book are the challenges against tobacco plain packaging legislation before domestic and international courts and tribunals and their outcome.</li> </ul>
How this book will help you: The book’s detailed analysis of the nature of investor dispute tribunals and how they may conflict with public interests – and its exploration of possible alternatives – is sure to be of great interest to internationally operating companies, policymakers, practitioners and scholars in both international trade law and intellectual property law.

Intellectual Property and International Dispute Resolution (Ieem and International Intellectual Property Law)

The convergence of various fields of technology is changing the fabric of society. Big data and data mining, Internet of Things, artificial intelligence and blockchains are already affecting business models and leading to a social and economic transformations that have been dubbed by the fourth industrial revolution. Focusing on the framework of intellectual property rights, the contributions to this book analyse how the technical background of this massive transformation affects intellectual property law and policy and how intellectual property is likely to change in order to serve the society. Well-known authorities in intellectual property law offer in-depth chapters on the roles in this revolution of such concepts and actualities as the following: <ul> <li>power and role of data as the raw material of the revolution;</li> <li>artificial inventors and creators;</li> <li>trade marks in the dimension of avatars and fictional game characters;</li> <li>concept of inventive step change where the person skilled in the art is virtual;</li> <li>data rights versus intellectual property rights;</li> <li>transparency in the context of big data;</li> <li>interrelations of data, technology transfer and antitrust;</li> <li>self-executable and 'smart' contracts;</li> <li>redefining the balance among exclusive rights, development, technology transfer and contracts; and</li> <li>proprietary information versus the public domain.</li> </ul> The chapters also provide complete analyses of how big data changes decision-making processes, how sustainable development requires redefinition, how technology transfer is re-emerging as technology diffusion and how the role of contracts and blockchain as instruments of monitoring and enforcement are being defined. Offering the first in-depth legal commentary and analysis of this highly topical issue, the book approaches the fourth industrial revolution from the perspectives of technical background, society and law. Its authoritative analysis of how the data-driven economy influences innovation and technology transfer is without peer. It will be welcomed by practicing lawyers in intellectual property rights and competition law, as well as by academics, think tanks and policymakers.

Intellectual Property Law and the Fourth Industrial Revolution (Ieem and International Intellectual Property Law)

Anke Moerland

When the TRIPS Agreement was concluded in 1994, many saw it as embodying a new gold standard of intellectual property protection that not only reformed the Paris and Berne Conventions but also made further IP agreements unnecessary. Although this optimistic vision has eroded - obligations to protect IP rights can now be found in trade agreements and can be enforced before domestic courts and investor-state tribunals - the Agreement continues to pervade trends and developments in international law, not only in IP but in trade law also. This comprehensive commentary on the past, present, and future of the Agreement focuses on its influence on key topics in IP as well as on enforcement and dispute resolution. 
The editors have assembled a group of renowned IP law practitioners and academics who, taking each area of IP law, in turn, show the extent to which TRIPS provisions have survived, expanded, or been supplanted by other bodies. Their analysis covers the different IP rights addressed in the TRIPS Agreement (copyrights; trade marks; geographical indications; patents; data protection and enforcement) both in historical perspective and in their development in the last 25 years. An additional three chapters cover: most-favoured-nation obligations in regard of subsequent free trade agreements; how societal interests alter the interpretation of TRIPS obligations; the judicial role in the WTO panels and Appellate Body; minimum standards and reduction of flexibilities in IP policy; relationship of WTO/TRIPS with other international agreements. 
As intellectual property becomes more pervasive in society than ever before - and as both technology related to the use of IP and the way protected works are consumed have changed beyond recognition over the past 25 years - jurists, academics, and practitioners in IP and trade law will welcome this unique opportunity to test the true scope of national sovereignty in the interpretation of intellectual property rights.

25 Years of the Trips Agreement