European Intellectual Property Developments

Abstract

As an European intellectual property lawyer, the author is often struck by the amount of comparative analysis in the area of intellectual property which adopts US intellectual property laws, rather than European ones, as their point of comparison. This seems strange when in many respects US intellectual property laws have their own unique features and when European such laws are often more closely aligned with the laws of most other countries in the world. This series of articles aims to expand knowledge of and to explain something of European intellectual property laws; how they got to their present state, what are current hot topics in them, where they are heading and why they matter. This first article will provide an overview of some of these issues and subsequent articles will focus on specific areas of intellectual property.