Intellectual property rights (IPRs) are increasingly significant elements of economic policy: they are vital to developed countries in an age of global trade. This book focuses on the major dilemmas that currently enmesh the subject: the omnipresent spread of IPRs across some recent technologies, the distraction caused by rights that achieve little of their intended purpose, and the seeming irrelevance of IPRs in the face of new technologies such as the internet.

• 1: Inventing


• 2: Creating


• 3: Branding

William Cornish is Herchel Smith Professor of Intellectual Property Law at the University of Cambridge.