Something to read this end-of-year break? Here are a couple of new titles

Legal Innovations In Asia: Judicial Lawmaking and the Influence of Comparative Law, edited by John O. Haley (Affiliate Professor of Law, University of Washington, Professor of Law, Vanderbilt University, among other things) and Toshiko Takenaka (Washington Research Foundation/W. Hunter Simpson Professor of Technology Law, University of Washington School of Law), is the third in the Studies in Comparative Law and Legal Culture series brought out by Edward Elgar Publishing.  According to the book's web page:

Legal Innovations in Asia explores how law in Asia has developed over time as a result of judicial interpretation and innovations drawn from the legal systems of foreign countries.

Expert scholars from around the world offer a history of law in the region while also providing a wider context for present-day Asian law. The contributors share insightful perspectives on comparative law, the role of courts, legal transplants, intellectual property, Islamic law and other issues as they relate to the practice and study of law in Japan, China, Taiwan, Korea and Southeast Asia.

Given the large number of countries that constitute Asia, and the variety of legal systems and judicial traditions which they have nourished, the contributors have given a more representative flavour to this book than the web blurb suggests -- and the book itself really does deliver on its promise of innovations. Islam influences the application of the law, for example, but can it also be established that judicial activism influences the legal application of Islam?

This is not an intellectual property book, but there is a good deal of intellectual property in it. Given Toshiko Takenaka's contribution to patent law in the US and beyond, this is scarcely surprising. The four chapters that comprise Part V of this tome are dedicated to IP, and the pieces on Korea's "transmit rather than create" concept and the prospects of a Thai adoption of the Bayh-Dole Act are well worth a read.

Bibliographic data: Publication date: December 2014. xii + 378 pp. Hardback ISBN 978 1 78347 278 9, ebook ISBN 978 1 78347 279 6. Price US$150 (online price from the publisher US$135). Rupture factor: low. Web page here.

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Innovation And Intellectual Property In China: Strategies, Contexts and Challenges, edited by Ken Shao (Professor of Law, University of Western Australia) and Xiaoqing Feng (Professor of Law, China University of Political Science and Law, Beijing), is another well-pitched Edward Elgar Publishing title, which will appeal to anyone who wants that mid-range information which is not too detailed, too long or too historical in its content (there was a time when this author feared that all China IP books would be seriously out of date by the time they were published, given the speed at which law, practice and governance evolve in China and the slow pace at which quality English texts emerged from the production process -- but that time is thankfully largely past). Incidentally, from Graham Dutfield's foreword to Peter K. Yu's clever chapter on the international enclosure of China's innovation space, the book keeps up a fairly fast pace: ideas, explanations, facts, principles, problems just keep tumbling out at the reader.  The chapters are best appreciated if the reader doesn't read straight through but pauses between them for thought.

Says the web-blurb:

China is evolving from a manufacturing-based economy to an innovation-based economy, but the delicate context behind this change has not been properly understood by foreign governments, companies and lawyers [or by many Chinese ones, Merpel ventures to suggest]. This book is an insightful response to ill-conceived notions of, and mis-assumptions regarding, the Chinese innovation economy. It represents an effort to marry a variety of “insiders’ perspectives” from China, with the analysis of international scholars.

With contributions from leading authors - including Dr Kong Xiangjun, President of the Intellectual Property Tribunal at the Supreme People’s Court of China - this book is the first comprehensive response to a highly controversial and largely under-developed field of inquiry. It seeks to unveil and understand the complexities and challenges that confront China’s innovation economy, setting out the cultural and historical context, the strategies that form the basis for this evolution, and the measures China has at its disposal to protect intellectual property. ...

This Kat was unable to identify the illustration on the front cover, which you can see at an angle if you look closely at the image above.  Can any arty reader assist?

Bibliographic data: publication date December 2014. xiv + 266 pp. Hardback ISBN 978 1 78100 159 2, ebook ISBN 978 1 78100 160 8. Price US$125 (online from the publisher $112.50). Rupture factor: small. Web page here