Book Review : International Handbook on Unfair Competition by Frauke Henning-Bodewig, Ed

The law of unfair competition stands at the intersection between several spheres of law: these include tort law, antitrust law, intellectual property law, consumer protection law and various statutory regimes regulating specific areas of commercial conduct. Given the divergence between the legal traditions of different legal systems, particularly between the common law and civil law based jurisdictions, the organisational structure of this area of the law varies dramatically from country to country. The scope of unfair competition encompasses areas of conduct as diverse as product design, sales, advertising, marketing and other commercial dealings with a trader's competitors, customers, and parties upstream or downstream from the business. While all these legal systems recognise the importance of regulating the behaviour of traders in the marketplace to ensure compliance with their respective thical norms of fair conduct and honesty, their individual approaches towards responding to these issues depend very much upon the architecture of their respective legal regimes