Intellectual property outline

International IP Outline
Monday, January 08, 2007
4:10 PM
1. Principles and Institutions
Brief history view:
• The increasing deficit of U.S. is because they export soft goods and they are easy to be borrowed and stolen and other goods don't come back to the U.S. The article talks about the huge loss that U.S. suffers. The concept of infringing can be different in differentcountries: e.g. making a copy for personal use is infringing in the U.S. may not be infringing in other countries where for example there is a pre-paid royalties system (deals made between the music producers and the ones that produce the medium for copying.
 
Everything started in England where in 1710 there was a printing monopoly grant or reasons of control. Laterthey changed the law and they granted the exclusive right to the author. Similar things were taking place in France and Germany and other countries in Europe. At this point the law was still domestic.
 
France and Belgium example: they had each a copyright law that gives their own citizens the exclusive right to print and sell their own stuff in their own countries. Butwhat if somebody takes a French book and pass the border and makes copies and sells it in Belgium, there was no cause of action. Because of la the lack of royalties, book by French people were cheaper than book by Belgian people. So it was not right for the French authors because their stuff was copied w/o their permission and in Belgium, the Belgium authors works were decreasing in sales andthen the Belgium government had cultural development concerns. So France is the big mover on this issue and started negotiate bilateral agreement. The smaller countries resisted to France initiatives, because there were more royalties into France from Belgium than more royalties pouring into Belgium. So they started to regulate this to protect their foreign publications, but the law stillended at the border. In the end authors control domestic publishing and publisher control foreign publications. Little by little different countries entered reciprocal agreements of this kind.
 
So whenever there was a foreign author, there was a lot of inquiry of the courts, so practically difficult situations, trade agreements expired every 5 years, and this added to thepractical disarray. So this phase of bilateral agreements lasted about 100 years.

The first multiple party treaty is the Bern Convention, late 1800, it has been modified, but is still the heart of the international IP. Two major principles:
• national treatment: treat foreign national the same as your own nationals.
1. Adv.: easy for the courts1. Disadv.: if the term is bigger in France then France would give Germans more protection than a French work would be given protection in Germany.
• Minimum standards: print, translate, publish for 50 years.
WTO added IP rights to hard goods so that more and more countries would join these international conventions.
a. Legal principles1. Territoriality
The current state of the law: absent some act of infringement within the U.S., courts generally refuse to apply the patent and copyright statutes to conduct abroad.
a. Patent Law - always look for whether there was direct infringement within the US.
1. Strict territoriality approach based onthe fact that the whole administrative process took part in the U.S., the PTO is a U.S. gov agency, so the U.S patent could not be valid outside U.S.
1. Earliest decision (1856): Brown v. Duchesne: U.S. Patent law did not apply to an improvement used in constructing the gaff of a foreign sailing vessel.
1. Dowagiac...