Games are cloned, reskinned and imitated by copying the elements of preexisting video games, even when infringing on copyrighted elements, distressing both game developers and gamers by introducing homogeneous games. The vagueness of the copyrightability of game rules encourages copying because, according to the idea/expression dichotomy, game rules are generally categorized as uncopyrightable ideas. Even so, this reasoning is not the same in all courts, especially the jurisdictions for the world’s largest two video game markets – China and the US. This article investigates and compares the copyrightability status of game rules in both jurisdictions. It finds that not all game rules are the same in copyrightability, and the rules of certain complex video games are copyrightable creative work, especially when game rules are complex and are expressed specifically enough and originality is established. In these cases, copyright protection is deserved. This suggests that the application of the idea/expression dichotomy in copyright law to game rules needs to be adjusted according to the different genres of games.

In China, recent years have witnessed significant growth in the pharmaceutical industry and an acceleration in pharmaceutical innovation. As a knowledge-intensive sector, the growth of the pharmaceutical industry in China marks an increasing need for protecting the enormous amounts of money invested in research and development. Arguably, the most efficient way for industry actors to recover their investments is through granting a limited duration of exclusive IP rights for the use and production of their products. Against this backdrop, over the past decades, China has adopted a series of IP-related laws and regulatory policies in China. On this basis, corporate demands and legislative efforts in China have led us to believe that a sound IP system that is compatible with China’s development needs would necessarily help stimulate investment, facilitate technology transfer, and more importantly, allocate the rights and benefits over knowledge and resources among various stakeholders. This is because, at first sight, the IP rights approach contains an obvious solution to the problem of misappropriation or free riding by addressing the problem of non-excludability of traditional medical knowledge (TMK) and associated genetic resources. However, the real picture couldn’t be more complex and different. The analysis of this article finds that China’s existing IP systems supply a conducive context for pharmaceutical corporations to exploit the system’s full strategic potential in plundering TMK and associated genetic resources. This situation has placed local communities and other TMK holders in China at a disadvantage.

In this study, the courtroom is examined as a discursive space of photography and it is argued that copyright infringement lawsuits introduce a unique frame for photographs that alter the meaning of the images. As a case study, Tony Gentile’s iconic photograph of the Italian judges Giovanni Falcone and Paolo Borsellino is used, it was the subject of the Rome Court of First Instance’s 2019 judgment. Relying on the contextual studies of photography, the shift in the image’s spectator, its surrounding, and its significance is examined. Eventually it is argued that as the eyes that see the image change from the Italian public to the Judge, the purpose of looking changes too.

Bangladesh is scheduled to graduate from the United Nations' least developed country (LDC) category in 2026. The graduation to developing country status will revive all the waived obligations under the World Trade Organization Agreement on Trade-Related Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights (TRIPS) regarding pharmaceutical patents from which Bangladesh was exempted as a member of the LDCs. During its time as an LDC, the Bangladesh government, although having a pre-existing patent regime, established a mailbox system storing pharmaceutical patent applications. Such establishment of a 'mailbox' appears to be beyond the government's delegated legislative authority. Moreover, the government kept receiving such applications for the last one and half decades. This article explores the country's mailbox dilemma and the implications and challenges of its graduation to developing country status. To respond to such conundrums, this article lays down some immediate and long-term ways forward for the country to ensure access to medicines for its people, who continue to experience huge income inequality.

Several high-profile rebrands, including those by Twitter and Starbucks, have involved removing text from logos. This move towards wordless, pictorial trade marks raises a difficult question about how the scope of protection of a registered trade mark should be determined. This article examines the particular issue of how much weight should be given to the idea or concept underlying a pictorial mark when assessing whether a defendant’s junior mark is ‘confusingly similar’. Drawing on legal principles and case examples from Europe, the United Kingdom, Singapore and New Zealand, it is claimed that courts and adjudicators should be careful not to overweight conceptual similarity. It is argued that a lack of care in assessing conceptual similarity risks awarding one trader overbroad protection, which may be tantamount to conferring on one trader a monopoly in an idea. A lack of care may also undermine the logic of a registration system by untethering protection from what is recorded on the Register, and may make trade mark law less predictable and certain. * The author declares that he was junior counsel in a case discussed in this article, Carabao Tawandang Co Ltd v Red Bull GmbH HC Wellington CIV-2005-485-1975, 31 August 2006. The views represented in this article are the author’s own, and do not reflect the views of his employer at the time, or the views of the client represented in that particular case.

The rise of the Internet of Things (IoT) and the development of 5G are set to add a new layer of complexity to the current practice of standard essential patents (SEPs) licensing. While, until recently, the debate has centred on the nature of fair, reasonable and non-discriminatory (FRAND) commitments and the mechanisms to avoid hold-up and reverse hold-up problems between licensors and licensees, a new hotly-debated issue has now emerged. At its core is the question of whether SEP holders should be required to grant a FRAND licence to any implementer seeking a licence, including component makers (the so-called ‘licence-to-all’ approach), or if they should be allowed freely to target the supply-chain level at which the licence is to be granted (the so-called ‘access-for-all’ approach). After providing an up-to-date overview of the current legal and economic debate, this article focuses on the most recent antitrust case law dealing with the matter on both sides of the Atlantic and argues that no sound economic and legal bases which favour licence-to-all solutions can be identified. * The authors would like to thank the anonymous referees, Luigi Federico Signorini and the participants in the 2021 Annual Conference of European Policy for Intellectual Property (EPIP), in the 38th Annual Conference of the European Law and Economics Association (EALE), in the TILTing Perspectives 2021 (Tilburg University), and in the 16th Annual Conference of the Academic Society for Competition Law (ASCOLA). The study was conducted as part of the research activities promoted by the DEEP-IN (Digital Ecosystem, Economic Policy and Innovation) Research Network. The author is grateful for the financial support received. Any opinions expressed in this paper are personal and are not to be attributed to the Bank of Italy. The first is Half-Causation Branching, which allows the logical mapping of the inventing space, within which the imaginary invention is located. Implementing this tool reveals two alternative nearby inventions, which if left out of the sought patent protection would render any eventually granted patent practically worthless. Following that, Half-Causation Encapsulation comes to the rescue by allowing the encapsulation of the original imaginary invention, plus the two alternative nearby ones, all in a manner that provides the all-important unity of invention On the one hand, patent agents are not supposed to contribute to their client’s inventive concept to the extent that they become co-inventors. On the other hand, scientists and engineers are not supposed to dedicate so much time and effort to learning about complex patent laws as to become patent agents. Arguably, each should aim to excel in their discipline. However, a structured dialogue should be considerably helpful to each and to the patent process as a whole. It is proposed that Half-Causation, with its logical structure, can provide a basis for such a dialogue. Besides targeting a readership in patent practices and theory, this paper should be of interest to multiple readerships, for example in engineering design, medical discovery and philosophy of technology.

Intellectual property (IP) protection for plant variety and plant innovations has posited some critical challenges to the traditional approach to farmers’ rights. Traditionally, farmers have freely exercised their rights in using, re-using, sowing, re-sowing, saving and exchanging their farm-produced crops or seeds with other farmers. Thus, it is critical to look into why many countries around the world, including developing countries (such as Bangladesh) have adopted IP-type protection for plant variety and plant innovations which potentially disadvantages the farmers? Is it due to ‘hard factors’ (the formal legal obligations under bilateral or plurilateral systems) and/or because of ‘soft factors’ (informal pressures of the various actors, including agri-business industry)? In crafting the domestic legal framework, it may be asked: how should an agriculturally dependent country (like Bangladesh) strike a balance between its domestic needs and international legal obligations? Precisely on the farmers’ rights, how far are such domestic legal provisions capable of striking a balance between the plant breeders’ rights and farmers’ rights? What lessons, if any, could be learnt from other jurisdictions which have already implemented legal regimes on plant variety? Should the approach be legal transplantation or legal transformation? Against such backdrops, this contribution critically appraises the outstanding questions and controversies on farmers’ rights as reflected in the Plant Varieties Protection Act (PVP) 2019 of Bangladesh. In doing so, it highlights the current overlapping and conflicting international laws on plant variety and plant innovations. Finally, it particularly draws some insights from the legal rules and implementing experiences of the Protection of Plant Varieties and Farmers’ Rights Act 2001 of India.

Jurisdiction is the fulcrum of any court or legislature. Jurisdiction for statutory intellectual property in Nigeria is vested in the centre in a federal system of government where legislative and adjudicatory powers are shared between federal and constituent governments. Historically, the jurisdiction of the Federal High Court (FHC) and State High Court (SHC) has been notoriously ambivalent in many issues – passing off being one of them. The passing off of intellectual property has been particularly problematic because of its common law origin and nature especially in the absence of a federal statute on it. This article reviews three different decisions of the Nigerian Supreme Court over time and argues that the Supreme Court may not have considered the ramifications of the different constitutions in those cases. It argues the position that the FHC should not exercise jurisdiction over passing off of intellectual property (common law tort) until there is a federal statute creating a substantive law on passing off. The jurisdiction lies with the SHC. It supports this position with the 1999 Constitution, state laws on torts as existing laws and the experience of Canada and the United States, and hopes the Supreme Court will, at the earliest opportunity, overrule or correct itself; or that the legislature will intervene.