DEATH OF PATENTS

Peter Drahos: has edited a provocative package of essays

Death of Patents is a new collection of essays in the Perspectives on Intellectual Property Law and Policy series, published by Lawtext Publishing Ltd for the Queen Mary Intellectual Property Research Institute. Edited by Australian scholar and former QM Herchel Smith Senior Research Fellow Peter Drahos, this collection of essays is quite provocative and demands of its readers that they keep an open mind while reading some material that they may find profoundly detrimental to their preconceived notions. On sale at £35, the book's contents are as follows:

Chapter 1 - Death of a Patent System - Introduction
Peter Drahos, Australian National University, Canberra

Chapter 2 - Schrodinger's Cat: An Observation on Modern Patent Law
Dr Margaret Llewelyn, Reader in Intellectual Property Law, and Deputy Director, Sheffield Institute for Biotechnology Law and Ethics (SIBLE), University of Sheffield

Chapter 3 - A Neuropsychological Analysis of the Law of Obviousness
Lachlan S. James, Innovation Capital, Sydney Australia

Chapter 4 - On Proprietary Rights and Personal Liberties: Constitutional Responses to Post-Industrial Patenting
John R Thomas, Associate Professor of Law, George Washington University

Chapter 5 - Shifts in India's Policy on Intellectual Property: The Role of Ideas, Coercion and Changing Interests
Anitha Ramanna, Lecturer at the Department of Politics and Public Administration, University of Pune, India

Chapter 6 - The Ethics of Patenting - Uneasy Justifications
Sigrid Sterckx, Senior Lecturer Research Fellow, Ghent University and Part time Professor, University of Antwerp

Chapter 7 - Legal and Ethical Aspects of Bio-Patenting: Critical Analysis of EU Biotechnology Directive
Geertui Van Overwalle, Dr. Iur; Professor of Law at the Katholieke Universiteit Leuven and at the Universite de Liege

Chapter 8 - Is the World Ready for Substantive Patent Law Harmonisation? A lesson from History
Graham Dutfield, Herchel Smith Senior Research Fellow at Queen Mary Intellectual Property Institute

The IPKat says you can really enjoy this little book. It shows how dangerously blinkered (though not necessarily wrong) a traditional patent lawyer's view of the patent system can be. Merpel adds, "I don't understand. If patent systems are dying, how come everyone seems to be making so much use of them and they're more popular than ever?". "In that case", says the IPKat, "do any of our readers fancy getting involved in a new collection of essays called Life of Patents? If so, let him know.

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