Intellectual Property and the Tourism Industry: From ACTA Protests towards a Restrictive Interpretation of Innovation Regulations

Abstract

In 2012 became reality James Boyle’s desire exposed in his essay from 1997 regarding a politics of intellectual property concerning the great deal of attention that must be paid to the Intellectual Property. At that time Boyle was disappointed by the lack of attention from lawyers, scholars, legal academics and the media for the Clinton administration’s proposal for copyright on the Net, a document that provided the blueprint of domestic and international regulatory efforts to expand intellectual property rights. Certainly this was not the case with ACTA where the public media forced by the private citizen’s protests tried to weight both the benefits and the costs of the new protection standards brought by the new international convention. After those moments Intellectual Property regulations are no more an esoteric and arcane field, something that is only interesting and comprehensible to the practitioners in the field, but a matter of public interests like the environment which arouse the attention of all the persons. In this way we all become aware that intellectual property radiates beyond the legal frame and interferes with several aspects of our lives, including our free time and the tourism consequently.