Intellectual property rights ('IPRs'), Professor Cornish reminds us, 'are essentially negative: they are rights to stop others doing certain things'1 – those things being primarily the use of the ideas (or more properly, the output of creative endeavour, which may be the expression or material embodiment of an idea, rather than the idea itself) covered in the grant made to right-owner. As rights to exclude, IPRs sit uneasily with the conventional notion of competition, which centres on the ability of several, possibly many, parties to act as rivals in striving for economic rewards.
Definition of 'Intellectual property'
Intellectual property refers to creations of the mind: inventions, literary and artistic works, and symbols, names, images, and designs used in commerce. Intellectual property is divided into two categories: Industrial property, which includes inventions (patents), trademarks, industrial designs, and geographic indications of source; and Copyright, which includes literary and artistic works such as novels, poems and plays, films, musical works, artistic works such as drawings, paintings, photographs and sculptures, and architectural designs. Rights related to copyright include those of performing artists in their performances, producers of music in their recordings, and those of broadcasters in their radio and television programs. (Source: WIPO)
The (uneasy and somewhat messy) interaction of the IP laws and the competition laws
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Intellectual property
Treatment of unilateral refusals to license and compulsory licensing in Australia
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Intellectual property
Henry Ergas former chair of the Australian Intellectual Property and Competition Review Committee presented this report to joint hearings on Competition and Intellectual Property Law and Policy in the Knowledge-Based Economy in Washington on May 22, 2002.
Intellectual Property Rights and Competition
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Intellectual property
Henry Ergas, former chair of the Australian Intellectual Property and Competition Review Committee Henry Ergas presented this report to joint hearings on Competition and Intellectual Property Law and Policy in the Knowledge-Based Economy in Washington on May 23, 2002.
Fair dealing, libraries and competition in the digital era
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Intellectual property
This paper was presented at a one-day conference in Sydney on March 23, 2001, "Intellectual property, competition policy's next frontier?", organised by IP Australia, and the University of New South Wales, which examined whether intellectual property laws were meeting the needs of business and consumers and maximising the benefits of domestic and global competition.
