Intellectual property (IP) is a category of property that includes intangible creations of the human intellect. There are many types of intellectual property, and some countries recognize more than others. The best-known types are patents, copyrights, trademarks, and trade secrets. The modern concept of intellectual property developed in England in the 17th and 18th centuries. The term "intellectual property" began to be used in the 19th century, though it was not until the late 20th century that intellectual property became commonplace in most of the world's legal systems.
A patent is a type of intellectual property that gives its owner the legal right to exclude others from making, using, or selling an invention for a limited period of time in exchange for publishing an enabling disclosure of the invention. In most countries, patent rights fall under private law and the patent holder must sue someone infringing the patent in order to enforce their rights. In some industries patents are an essential form of competitive advantage; in others they are irrelevant.
The tragedy of the anticommons is a type of coordination breakdown, in which a commons does not emerge, even when general access to resources or infrastructure would be a social good. It is a mirror-image of the older concept of tragedy of the commons, in which numerous rights holders' combined use exceeds the capacity of a resource and depletes or destroys it. The "tragedy of the anticommons" covers a range of coordination failures, including patent thickets and submarine patents. Overcoming these breakdowns can be difficult, but there are assorted means, including eminent domain, laches, patent pools, or other licensing organizations.
The World Intellectual Property Organization is one of the 15 specialized agencies of the United Nations (UN). Pursuant to the 1967 Convention Establishing the World Intellectual Property Organization, WIPO was created to promote and protect intellectual property (IP) across the world by cooperating with countries as well as international organizations. It began operations on 26 April 1970 when the convention entered into force. The current Director General is Singaporean Daren Tang, former head of the Intellectual Property Office of Singapore, who began his term on 1 October 2020.
Libertarians have differing opinions on the validity of intellectual property.
Plant breeders' rights (PBR), also known as plant variety rights (PVR), are rights granted to the breeder of a new variety of plant that give the breeder exclusive control over the propagating material and harvested material of a new variety for a number of years.
The Access to Knowledge (A2K) movement is a loose collection of civil society groups, governments, and individuals converging on the idea that access to knowledge should be linked to fundamental principles of justice, freedom, and economic development.
The National Institute of Science Communication and Information Resources (NISCAIR), located at New Delhi, India, was an information science institute in India founded in 2002. In 2021, the institute was merged with National Institute of Science, Technology and Development Studies to form National Institute of Science Communication and Policy Research (NIScPR). It operated under the umbrella of the Council of Scientific and Industrial Research (CSIR) that comprise 38 other labs and institutes in India. The institute published several academic journals and magazines.
Traditional knowledge (TK), indigenous knowledge (IK) and local knowledge generally refer to knowledge systems embedded in the cultural traditions of regional, indigenous, or local communities. According to the World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO) and the United Nations (UN), traditional knowledge and traditional cultural expressions (TCE) are both types of indigenous knowledge.
The following outline is provided as an overview of and topical guide to library science:
Grey literature is materials and research produced by organizations outside of the traditional commercial or academic publishing and distribution channels. Common grey literature publication types include reports, working papers, government documents, white papers and evaluations. Organizations that produce grey literature include government departments and agencies, civil society or non-governmental organizations, academic centres and departments, and private companies and consultants.
The DePaul University College of Law is the professional graduate law school of DePaul University in Chicago. The College of Law’s facilities encompass nine floors across two buildings, with features such as the Vincent G. Rinn Law Library and Leonard M. Ring Courtroom. The law school is located within two blocks of state and federal courts, as well as numerous law firms, corporations and government agencies.
The Max Planck Institute for Innovation and Competition is a Munich, Germany, based research institute, which is part of the Max Planck Society for the Advancement of Science, which manages 84 institutes and research institutions. The institute was formerly known as the Max Planck Institute for Intellectual Property and Competition Law and the name was changed to Max Planck Institute for Innovation and Competition in view of the broader focus of the institute and its interdisciplinary character. The major research areas of the institute are intellectual property, innovation and competition. Apart from providing research support for scholars from across the world, the institute also publishes the International Review of Intellectual Property and Competition Law (IIC).
The Arrow information paradox, and occasionally referred to as Arrow's disclosure paradox, named after Kenneth Arrow, American economist and joint winner of the Nobel Memorial Prize in Economics with John Hicks, is a problem faced by companies when managing intellectual property across their boundaries. It occurs when they seek external technologies for their business or external markets for their own technologies. It has implications for the value of technology and innovations as well as their development by more than one firm, and for the need for and limitations of patent protection.
Legal scholars, economists, activists, policymakers, industries, and trade organizations have held differing views on patents and engaged in contentious debates on the subject. Critical perspectives emerged in the nineteenth century that were especially based on the principles of free trade. Contemporary criticisms have echoed those arguments, claiming that patents block innovation and waste resources that could otherwise be used productively, and also block access to an increasingly important "commons" of enabling technologies, apply a "one size fits all" model to industries with differing needs, that is especially unproductive for industries other than chemicals and pharmaceuticals and especially unproductive for the software industry. Enforcement by patent trolls of poor quality patents has led to criticism of the patent office as well as the system itself. Patents on pharmaceuticals have also been a particular focus of criticism, as the high prices they enable puts life-saving drugs out of reach of many people. Alternatives to patents have been proposed, such Joseph Stiglitz's suggestion of providing "prize money" as a substitute for the lost profits associated with abstaining from the monopoly given by a patent.
Suzanne Scotchmer was an American professor of law, economics and public policy at the University of California, Berkeley and also a noted author on many economic subjects. She earned her B.A. from University of Washington magna cum laude in 1970, her M.A. in statistics from UC Berkeley in 1979, and her PhD in economics from UC Berkeley in 1980.
The Japan Patent Attorneys Association (JPAA), headquartered in Tokyo, Japan, is the only one national, professional bar association of Japanese patent attorneys (Benrishi) with approximately 10,000 members.
Shamnad Basheer was an Indian legal scholar and founder of the blog SpicyIP. He was also the founder of IDIA, a trust which works on making legal education accessible for underprivileged students. Basheer was a Ministry of Human Resource Development Chaired Professor of Intellectual Property Law at the WBNUJS, Kolkata, and the Frank H. Marks Visiting Associate Professor of Intellectual Property Law at the George Washington University Law School, and a research associate at the Oxford Intellectual Property Research Center (OIPRC). He founded several initiatives such as SpicyIP, IDIA, P-PIL and Lex Biosis. Basheer intervened in the landmark Novartis case, filed a number of other public interest litigations and took initiative to bring about changes in the IPR regime in India.
Jorge L. Contreras is an American legal scholar and attorney who is recognized as a leading global authority on intellectual property law, technical standardization and the law and policy of human genomics.
