Intellectual Property, Public Policy, and International Trade

The rising importance and continuous expansion of intellectual property protection quite naturally goes together with increasing concern about the legal and political foundations of such enhanced protection. Nowhere does the basic equation which underlies intellectual property, namely that the pursuit of short term private interest by the holders of such property will satisfy the public interest in the long term, become both more visible, but also questionable than at the crossroads between the grant and enforcement of exclusive rights with international trade. Catchphrases, such as patent protection and access to essential medicines, or access to genetic resources, benefit sharing and economic development, stand for fundamental tensions and conflicts between private property and the public interest. This book presents the contributions that have been made on these and related topics by a group of internationally renowned experts at a workshop held at the College of Europe, Bruges.

The Editors: Inge Govaere is full-time Professor in European Law at Ghent University, and since 2003 also Director of the European Legal Studies Department of the College of Europe, Bruges. She is author of The Use and Abuse of Intellectual Property Rights (London 1996), and co-editor of The 1992 Challenge at National Level (Baden-Baden 1990), as well as of 30 Years of European Legal Studies at the College of Europe (Brussels 2005). She has widely published in law journals and books, and participated in the Oxford Encyclopaedia of European Law. Hanns Ullrich is Professor at the College of Europe since 1991. He held a chair at the Universität der Bundeswehr München (1985-2004) and at the European University Institute, Florence (2003-2006). His main research areas are European and international economic law, in particular competition law and intellectual property law. He has published about a dozen books as author and/or editor and has written numerous articles in these and related fields. He is also editor in chief of the Revue internationale du droit économique.

Inhaltsverzeichnis