Harmonizing Intellectual Property Law for a Trans-Atlantic Knowledge Economy

This book gathers and builds on research into distinct national and regional traditions in regulating innovation. It is an early attempt at a comprehensive legal history of the uneven trans-Atlantic harmonization of IP law. Authors explore harmonization as a legal mandate and a progressive ideal, and imagine areas in which coherent regulatory webs could build a more vibrant trans-Atlantic knowledge economy.

Table of Contents:
Foreword Acknowledgments Figures Notes on Contributors Harmonizing Intellectual Property Law for a Trans-Atlantic Knowledge Economy – an Introduction  Péter Mezei, Hannibal Travis and Anett Pogácsás Part 1: Pursuit of Harmonization 1 From Plato to WIPO: Old and New in Legal Harmonization  Laura R. Ford 2 Augmented Creativity in a Harmonized Trans-Atlantic Knowledge Economy  Hannibal Travis 3 Press Publications and the Curious Case of Exceptions to Neighbouring Rights  Ana Lazarova 4 New Possibilities with Out-of-Commerce Works in the EU  Dénes Legeza Part 2: Divergencies in Harmonization 5 The Need for a More Balanced Policy Approach for Digital Exhaustion – a Critical Review of the Tom Kabinet and ReDigi Judgments  Péter Mezei and Caterina Sganga 6 Online Rights’ Withdrawal and Collective Management – Harmonizing the Online Music Rights Withdrawals for a Trans-Atlantic Streaming Economy  Lucius Klobucnik 7 “To Waive or not to Waive?” – Some Thoughts on the Role of Copyright Waiver  Anett Pogácsás 8 Experimenting with EU Moral Rights Harmonisation and Works of Visual Arts: Dream or Nightmare?  Giulia Dore 9 Towards Unified Protection of Users with Disabilities in EU IP Law?  Karolina Sztobryn Part 3: Innovation for or against Harmonization? 10 “Spooky” Innovation and Human Rights  Hannibal Travis 11 Public Property from the Machine  Mauritz Kop 12 AI Training Data: between Holy Grail and Forbidden Fruit  David Linke Part 4: The Challenges of Technological Advancements on IP Doctrine – Any Space for Harmonization Yet? 13 Navigating the Trans-Atlantic Design Protection Quandary  Peter S. Menell 14 3D Printing, Digital Watermarking and Copyright Protection in CAD Design Files  Ioanna Lapatoura 15 No More Convergence? Copyright Protection of Application Programming Interfaces in the USA and the EU  Bohdan Widła 16 Photographic Works and Mere Photographies: a View of an Old Discussion under the Point of View of New Technologies  Luis-Javier Capote-Pérez Index

About the Author :
Péter Mezei, Ph.D. (2010), is Professor of Law at the University of Szeged, adjunct professor at the University of Turku, and chief researcher at the Vytautas Magnus University. He has regularly published on comparative, international, European and digital copyright law, including Copyright Exhaustion (2nd ed., Cambridge University Press, 2022). Hannibal Travis, J.D. (1999), is Professor of Law at the Florida International University and Co-Director of the Intellectual Property Certificate Program. He has published numerous articles and book chapters on intellectual property and Internet law, including Copyright Class Struggle: Creative Economies in a Social Media Age (Cambridge University Press, 2018). Anett Pogácsás, Ph.D. (2017), is Associate Professor at the Pázmány Péter Catholic University. She has worked extensively in the field of intellectual property law, and besides relevant articles and book chapters, she co-authored Intellectual Property: Hungary (Wolters Kluwer, 2023).

Review :
"In the last decades, harmonization of copyright has been one of the “hot-topics”, especially in the context of EU law. However, European law has mainly adopted directives that lack a systematic approach and regulate only some aspects of copyright law. This has lead to a patchy harmonization, which is not able to respond to the rise of new digital communication technologies or to the demands of the globalized economy. At the same time, national non-European courts increasingly make reference in their decisions to the case law of the Court of Justice, while European national courts often refer to US copyright cases. Nevertheless, European work on copyright norms has been mainly concentrated on harmonization at the EU level, with a limited interest in a dialogue with other legal systems. This book edited by Peter Mezei, Anett Pogácsás and Hannibal Travis therefore represents an important effort to fill the international harmonization gap, offering innovative perspectives for both legal scholars and legal practitioners. – Giovanni Maria Riccio, Professor of Law, University of Salerno "For well over a century, the international community has shared a goal of harmonizing intellectual property laws among nations. Unfortunately, these nations have been aiming at a moving target. Due to changes in underlying technologies—the internet, streaming of content, and social media, to name just a few obvious examples—the considerations relevant to harmonization keep changing. Different nations have taken different approaches to these new considerations. The result has been not only a less-than-complete harmonization, but a lack in uniformity in how harmonization takes place. Stated differently, even when nations have the same end result, they may reach that result by following quite different paths. This book on harmonization is an invaluable contribution to the discussion. Two features are especially important. First, the book pays special attention to the issues that arise in connection with technical advances. Numerous passages in the book deal with these new technologies, and explore how nations have tried to fit their intellectual property rules to the problems inherent in those technologies. Second, the book takes a comparative approach. Most discussions of harmonization concentrate on the EU, US, or other national or regional system. By contrast, this book compares how different regimes have dealt with the same basic problems. This comparative approach is extremely useful, as nations can learn from the successes and failures of other nations. The analysis should appeal to a wide audience, including policymakers, academics, and attorneys (and other representatives) practicing in the intellectual property field." – John Cross, Grosscurth Professor of Intellectual Property Law, University of Louisville "For the past few decades, harmonization has been a key driving force behind international and regional intellectual property norm-setting. This comprehensive and well-curated volume brings together scholars across the Atlantic to examine the prospects and limits of harmonization. It covers a wide array of timely topics, including artificial intelligence, streaming platforms, digital exhaustion, the press publishers' right and design protection. Whether you are a fan, critic or neutral observer of the harmonization process, you will appreciate the insights provided by this book." – Peter K. Yu, Regents Professor of Law and Communication, Texas A&M University