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"Editorial" [2017] ELECD 947; in Ghidini, Gustavo; Ullrich, Hanns; Drahos, Peter (eds), "Kritika: Essays on Intellectual Property" (Edward Elgar Publishing, 2017) xiii

Book Title: Kritika: Essays on Intellectual Property

Editor(s): Ghidini, Gustavo; Ullrich, Hanns; Drahos, Peter

Publisher: Edward Elgar Publishing

ISBN (hard cover): 9781786438980

Section Title: Editorial

Number of pages: 4

Extract:

Editorial
Since the second half of the twentieth century, the unrelenting develop-
ment of new technologies and forms of communication, and the related
emergence of new models of production and diffusion of innovation and
creativity, have boosted and accelerated, at global, regional and national
levels, an unprecedented process of `fragmentation' of IP's normative
framework.
We see evidence of this fragmentation in the multiplication and
internal diversification of fundamental categories (just think of the variety
of patent, or patent-like models, for protecting technological innovation,
or the array of neighbouring rights regimes within copyright law; see also
the essay by Johanna Gibson, dealing with the evolving internal com-
plexity of geographical indications) and the `hybridization' and increas-
ing overlaps among the basic IP paradigms (see the discussion of the
multi-layered protection of industrial design by Jens Schovsbo and
Thomas Riis), to antitrust's `interference' in the exercise of (as well as
the entitlement to) IPRs. We are confronted by an uncoordinated regula-
tory déluge of rules, principles, precepts and doctrines from domestic,
regional and international sources. This fragmentation and flood perhaps
suggests that legislatures have failed in their duty to create property
rights with certain boundaries, placing an increasing burden on regulatory
agencies, especially competition law authorities.
Understanding how the pieces of this puzzle fit together seems all the
more a mission impossible given an encompassing broader economic and
juridical-political framework heavily characterized by accelerated,
increasingly industry-specific legislative actions, despite our relatively
poor knowledge of the ...