Exhaust this!

Abstract

Jerome Reichman correctly notes in his foreword to the book that there is still no international consensus concerning a uniform policy justification for the principle of exhaustion, nor is there any consensus about uniform rules to be adopted either for exhaustion in general or even for specific application of this doctrine to patents, trademarks, copyrights, and related intellectual property regimes (p. xv). The Research Handbook edited by Irene Calboli and Edward Lee serves as an excellent source for such a generalized, and at the same time detailed, approach in understanding and analysing the doctrine of exhaustion from a global perspective. The reviewer—based on his own experience in this field—can confirm the editors’ statement, according to which ‘no academic collection or book has systematically addressed the various issues related to this topic to date, including the various theories at the basis of the principle of exhaustion and parallel imports’ (p. xix.). Certainly, hundreds of academic papers, book chapters and monographs have touched on the topic. Most often, however, these papers have discussed the issue solely from one (or only a few) perspective(s), depending on the jurisdiction (mainly the USA or Europe), the field of law (copyright or industrial property) or the period of publication (generally pre- and post-digital era) under consideration. The editors of this volume, and all the contributors, thus deserve high praise for their efforts to create a concise, comparative, interdisciplinary (focusing both on law and economics) and multi-functional handbook that provides guidance both for practitioners and theorists.