‘Orphan works’ are works in which copyright still subsists, but where the rightholder, whether it be the creator of the work or successor in title, cannot be located.This report was commissioned to assist the UK government in evaluating policy options in the implementation of the Hargreaves...

At first sight, it may not seem like copyright plays a role in the fight against climate change and more generally the protection of the environment. But in many ways, it does, and it does so with, maybe surprisingly, quite some importance. Indeed, copyright works can be extremely varied. In the...

The predominant justification for most intellectual property rights is the incentive theory or utilitarian rationale. Behind this justification lies the Western idea of progress and its derivatives, liberalism, capitalism and consumerism. This article shows that the progress ideology rests on...

It has been over fifteen years since the EU started harmonizing copyright law. This original Handbook takes stock and questions what the future of EU copyright should be. What went wrong with the harmonization acquits? What did the directives do well? Should copyright be further harmonized? Each...

Comments on the European Court of Justice ruling in IMS Health GmbH & Co OHG v NDC Health GmbH & Co KG (C-418/01) on whether a database maker committed an abuse of dominant position under the EC Treaty Art.82 by refusing to grant a copyright licence to allow a rival company to use a brick...

This article deals with the contractual protection of databases which are publicly made available by their producers. The article reviews this issue in the European Union and the United States. It is useful to analyse database protection in this manner, especially in the United States where the...

The dominant justification for intellectual property rights at least in the West and international treaties is utilitarian, and more precisely based on the Chicago School of Law and Economics (first section). However, this school of thought is both flawed and ideological (second section). Basing...

The Chicago School of the law and economics movement, on which the predominant justification for independent property rights is based in most countries, is flawed mainly because it takes economic wealth as the sole proxy for well-being. We suggest replacing it with a well-being approach, which,...