The Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement (ACTA) and the secrecy of its negotiation process have given rise to widespread speculation on the content and the objectives of the Agreement, leading to the development of considerable mistrust among the general public. This article concentrates on one...

The limited role the objectives and principles of the TRIPS Agreement (Articles 7 and 8) have played so far in the interpretation and implementation of its substantive provisions has often been criticised. The WTO Panel and Appellate Body Reports in the “Australia - Plain Packaging” dispute...

Statutory remuneration rights are progressively attracting the attention of policy makers as regulatory tools since they constitute a middle way between exclusivity and free uses. Remuneration rights have the potential to realise the delicate balance between access to and protection of...

The "International Instrument on Permitted Uses in Copyright Law" (the Instrument) is the result of a research project for a balanced reconciliation of interests in copyright law. The project was coordinated by the Max Planck Institute for Innovation and Competition and resulted in a legal...

For the European Union (EU), the dynamics of signing bilateral trade and investment agreements with third countries is steadily going forward. Good examples of such agreements are the controversial “Comprehensive Economic and Trade Agreement” (“CETA”) between Canada and the EU and, the...

Last year, before the onset of a global pandemic highlighted the critical and urgent need for technology-enabled scientific research, the World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO) launched an inquiry into issues at the intersection of intellectual property (IP) and artificial intelligence...

The Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership, better known under the name “TTIP”, is a bilateral trade and investment agreement that has been negotiated between the European Union and the United States since 2013. The respective administrations on both sides of the Atlantic have...

The harmonization of the legal framework for criminal enforcement of intellectual property rights (IPR) at the regional and international level has since its inception been a sensitive and difficult issue, mainly due to the diverging moral and cultural legal conceptions of negotiating parties...

Copyright, at international, European, and national levels, does not provide a legal framework that prioritizes enabling and incentivizing research using protected works and information to the extent necessary and desirable in a digital, data-driven society in order to build a sustainable...

While the European Parliament overwhelmingly rejected in 2005 the directive proposal on the patentability of computer-implemented inventions, the subject remains very controversial, particularly due to the fact that the European Patent Office has maintained its practice of granting patents on...