Death of Patents

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DEATH OF PATENTS
Published in association with the Queen Mary Intellectual Property Research Institute, Queen Mary, University of London

Edited by Peter Drahos

A5 Softback Prelims + 229pp
Publication  2005   ISBN 0 9539403 2 2
£35   full contents

'Much of what is discussed focuses on patent quality, and as anyone who works in this area or even just keeps an eye on commentary form the legal and patent community can tell, the debate about patent quality is raging. This book is a clever collection as it taps into the current fears that patent quality has diminished in some jurisdictions to such an extent that patents have little benefit to the general public and research community as a whole and only benefit the patent holder'. All in all this is an interesting (and somewhat eclectic) collection of essays all loosely bases around the origin and future of patenting.'
Anna Feros - EIPR April 2006

National patent systems have stopped serving the ideal of public benefit. Instead the world is moving towards a universal patent system that will only make a few rich countries even richer. The various chapters in this book, written by leading scholars in the field, show how national patent systems have been compromised. Doctrinal developments in patent law no longer square with the public good. The requirement of inventiveness in patent law no longer complements what we know about creativity and may in fact stand in the way of inventiveness and innovation. The standard moral justifications for the patent system that we now have simply do not work. The erosion of national sovereignty over the setting of patent standards means that increasingly most nation states will be hampered in their use of patents as a tool of industry policy. Death of Patents details these and other changes in national patent systems.

Peter Drahos is a Professor in the Law at the Research School of Social Sciences, Australian National University (ANU). He is Director of the Centre for Competition and Consumer Policy that is part of the Regulatory Institutions Network at the ANU and on the Board of Directors of the Foundation for Effective Markets & Governance.

His former positions include Herchel Smith Senior Research Fellow in Intellectual Property at the Centre for Commercial Law Studies, Queen Mary College, University of London and officer of the Australian Commonwealth Attorney-General's Department. He holds degrees in law, politics and philosophy and is admitted as a barrister and solicitor. He has published widely in law and social science journals on a variety of topics including contract, legal philosophy, telecommunications, intellectual property and international business regulation. He has written papers and reports on intellectual property for a number of organizations, including the European Commission, the UK Commission on Intellectual Property Rights, the Commonwealth Secretariat and Oxfam.

His publications include A Philosophy of Intellectual Property, Dartmouth (1996), Global Business Regulation, Cambridge University Press, 2000, (with John Braithwaite) and Information Feudalism: Who Controls the Knowledge Economy? (with John Braithwaite), Earthscan (2002), New Press (2003) and Oxford University Press, (2003). In 2004 Global Business Regulation was awarded the Grawemeyer Award for Ideas Improving World Order. This award is one of the most prestigious in the social science field.