Intellectual Property

Intellectual Property: Recent developments

Microsoft Antitrust Documents:

14-Feb-95: U.S. District Judge Stanley Sporkin's Microsoft ruling

1994/95 GATT / WTO agreement:

Of the GATT 1994 / WTO-Agreement, ANNEX 1C: Agreement on Trade-Related Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights, Including Trade in Counterfeit Goods (230 K!) might also be significant.

The U.S. Supreme Court

denied Copyright protection for simple directories, indexes and so on (e.g. U.S. White Pages !) in its decision of March '91.
The majority opinion for this landmark Information Law decision Feist Publications vs. Rural Telephone Service was written by Sandra Day O'Connor.

"Thomas" of the U.S. congress can provide you with up to-date information on the Copyright Term Extension Act of 1995 (introduced in the House and the Senate).

August 15, 1994: The Working Group on Intellectual Property Rights

was established within the Information Policy Committee of the Information Infrastructure Task Force (IITF) to examine IP implications of the NII.
The group has released a preliminary draft of its report, Intellectual Property and the National Information Infrastructure, on the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office WWW server.

May 27, 1994: The Technology Board of Trade

says it serves as a trading floor for companies seeking and/or providing reusable software technology. It assists businesses in defining, valuing and exchanging intellectual property and provides proven practices for the transfer of commercial technology.

Latest news will be discussed in the Usenet-newsgroup

misc.int-property

What are the relevant treaties and laws ?

a) International treaties and conventions:

This includes listings from LII's Topical Fields.

• Treaties Dealing with Intellectual Property
  • Berne Convention for the Protection of Literary & Artistic Works (as revised in 1971 and amended in 1979)
    earlier version: (Stockholm 1967 revision to which the U.S. isn't party)
    The Berne Convention became more important than the earlier U.C.C. Universal Copyright Convention below.
  • Paris Convention for the Protection of Industrial Property (as revised in 1967)
  • Patent Cooperation Treaty (1971)
  • Gopher at Cornell: Universal Copyright Convention as revised 1971 (U.N.T.S. 13444 vol.943)
  • The GATT 1994 / WTO, ANNEX 1C: Agreement on Trade-Related Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights, Including Trade in Counterfeit Goods, as mentioned above.

• Law Dealing with Technology and Networked Communication
  Villanova Law School Legal Automation Papers
  EFF Collection of Net-Related Material
  

b) U.S. copyright laws:

• For more, please see our Copyright Law page
• Index/Syllabi of Decisions of the U.S. Supreme Court: Syllabi at Cornell.
• Intellectual Property Decisions of the U.S. Supreme Court

c) Europe: The Bangemann Report

• Chapter III: Completing the agenda contains the following sections:
  
  Protection of intellectual property rights (IPR)
  Privacy
  Electronic protection (encryption), legal protection and security

  Europe and the information society : An action plan (Follow up to the Bangemann Report)