The Need for Climate Improvement in Intellectual Property Law

Abstract

Today’s interconnected world is a turbulent kaleidoscope of complex and dynamic changes. The forces of globalization, geopolitical developments, societal demands and heightened expectations are but a few examples of the multiple pressures bearing down on the intellectual property rights (IPR) system. As a result of modern technological development, issues of IPR have also come to be of more direct concern to users, enjoining closer attention to third-party interests. Protection can no longer be viewed solely in its original and at one time naturally given right-holder perspective, the perspective informing the creation of the Paris Convention for the Protection of Industrial Property Rights in 1883 and the Berne Convention for the Protection of Literary and Artistic Works in 1886. As can be seen from Joseph Straus’s list of publications for the past three years, IPR nowadays are often concerned with multiple interests, delicate balances and the transcendence of boundaries with other fields and interests – labor law, biotechnology, digital technology, economics, ethics, trade relations, collective or individual ownership, competitive conditions, medicine, the environment, international development and world politics – or else with wide-ranging approaches to discussing the appropriate structure of the traditional system of exclusive rights. Although problems of this kind attract and engage the younger generation and make teaching and research in this many-faceted field so rewarding, it is to be regretted that research no longer forms the basis of IPR legislation to any great extent,4 as has become espe-