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The Making of Modern Intellectual Property Law

The Making of Modern Intellectual Property Law

The Making of Modern Intellectual Property Law

Brad Sherman, Griffith University, Queensland
Lionel Bently, King's College London
July 1999
Available
Hardback
9780521563635
$140.00
USD
Hardback
USD
Paperback

    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.

    • First detailed historical account of 'IP' (the post-1911 book should be written in time)
    • Two young scholars' widely respected in their joint presentation of these ideas /now written up
    • Offers a number of important lessons for current debates in the area

    Reviews & endorsements

    "This book is full of new ideas and methods. As such, it will serve as a model and stimulus for further scholarly inquiry. With penetrating working hypotheses, Sherman and Bently uncover new evidence that puts much conventional wisdom into question." Paul Edward Geller, Copyright Society of the U.S.A. Journal

    "Sherman and Bently have made bold and provocative contributions to a topic of central importance and are to be congratulated on the excellence of their work." Business History Review

    See more reviews

    Product details

    March 2008
    Paperback
    9780521057134
    264 pages
    228 × 152 × 16 mm
    0.41kg
    Available

    Table of Contents

    • Part I. Towards a Property in Intangibles:
    • 1. Property in mental labour
    • 2. The mentality of intangible property
    • Part II. The Emergence of a Modern Intellectual Property Law:
    • 3. Designing the law
    • 4. Managing the legal boundaries
    • Part III. Towards an Intellectual Property Law:
    • 5. Crystallization of the categories
    • 6. Completing the framework
    • 7. Explanations for the shape of intellectual property law
    • Part IV. Transformations in the Intellectual Property Law:
    • 8. Changes in the framework
    • 9. From creation to object
    • 10. Closure and its consequences
    • 11. Remembering and forgetting
    • Bibliography.
      Authors
    • Brad Sherman , Griffith University, Queensland
    • Lionel Bently , University of Cambridge