Guest book review: Dutfield and Suthersanen on Global Intellectual Property Law

This review of Dutfield and Suthersanen on Global Intellectual Property Law, is brought to you by Vera Vallone. Vera is an associate at Lenz & Staehelin with a focus on Intellectual Property, perviously her doctoral thesis was in the field of patent law and she completed an LLM at Queen Mary University London where she had the honor to attend Professor Suthersanen's and Professor Dutfield's lecture and participate in many stimulating discussions.  

Dutfield and Suthersanen on Global Intellectual Property Law

Globalisation and as a consequence thereof the interconnectivity and complexity of international issues and conflicts are influencing the legal profession in many ways. According to the authors Uma Suthersanen (Professor in International Intellectual Property Law in the Center for Commercial Law Studies at Queen Mary University of London, UK) and Graham Dutfield (Professor of International Governance in the School of Law at the University of Leeds, UK), these global developments also  impact the way intellectual property law is taught. 

 

In response to the increasing globalisation, the authors are applying a new approach in teaching intellectual property law: They are successfully presenting the important elements of intellectual property law in a global context and encompass the content of intellectual property law across the boundaries of both legal jurisdictions as well as interdisciplinary fields. They also succeeded in presenting this highly complex content in a concise and very accessible 500 page-long second edition of "Global Intellectual Property Law". This edition is thoroughly revised and expanded in order to take technical and legal developments as well as policy changes and the current zeitgeist into account.

Although various legal issues concerning intellectual property law are limited to local jurisdictions, the authors elevate these otherwise localized issues to a global platform in a remarkable way, providing global but also local insights. 

This approach leads the first part named "Intellectual Property as Globalised Localism", in which the authors draw attention to the characteristics of local, regional, global and even historical considerations of intellectual property law. The chapters offer both an overview of the origins and the justification of intellectual property law as well as its historical development of legal structures.  

The second part titled "Creating and Branding" deals with the individual intellectual property rights and skillfully combines the legal foundations (based on US law, EU law, international agreements or comparative law considerations) with information on the historical and scientific developments of such intellectual property rights. Each chapter ("Copyright", "Patents", "Trade marks", "Design intellectual property", "Geographical indications", "Plant intellectual property" and "Utility models and innovation patents") has a similar structure which covers origins, legal bases, developments and then moves on to the specifics of the respective intellectual property right. 

As the title suggests, the third part "Shifting contours" delves into cross-cutting issues that intellectual property rights encompass. Accordingly, the chapters highlight some highly relevant issues such as "human rights", "education and cultural heritage", "health", "new biologics", "genetic resources", "traditional knowledge and cultural expressions" and "networked technologies". Each chapter consists of an overview and punctual in-depth knowledge of the respective chapter-topic, which are overlapping with intellectual property law. 

"Global Intellectual Property Law", second edition, sheds light on highly complex subject areas of intellectual property law in a clearly presented way with a reader-friendly and pleasant graphic presentation.  As a valuable resource, it covers overlapping connections of otherwise localized legal issues. It offers a wide variety of legal, political, economic, philosophical and scientific issues that encompass intellectual property law in a standard work that shows connections of all these issues in a global context. The initial idea of approaching intellectual property law from a multi-faceted perspective by means of issues that transcend territorial, legal and disciplinary boundaries proves throughout the book and makes it an invaluable textbook for students, scholars or policy makers at all levels.  

Publisher: Edward Elgar

ISBN: 978 1 78254 884 3

Extent: 576 pp

Paperback: £40

Hardback £140 

eBook: £32