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ContextTo facilitate the manufacturing of COVID-19 medical products, in October 2020 India and South Africa proposed a waiver of certain intellectual property (IP) provisions of a World Trade Organization (WTO) agreement. After nearly two years, a narrow waiver agreement that did little for vaccine access passed the ministerial despite the pandemic's impact on global trade, which the WTO is mandated to safeguard.MethodsThe authors conducted a content analysis of WTO legal texts, key-actor statements, media reporting, and the WTO's procedural framework to explore legal, institutional, and ideational explanations for the delay.FindingsIP waivers are neither legally complex nor unprecedented within WTO law, yet these waiver negotiations exceeded their mandated 90-day negotiation period by approximately 18 months. Waiver opponents and supporters engaged in escalating strategic framing that justified and eventually secured political attention at head-of-state level, sidelining other pandemic solutions. The frames deployed discouraged consensus on a meaningful waiver, which ultimately favored the status quo that opponents preferred. WTO institutional design encouraged drawn-out negotiation while limiting legitimate players in the debate to trade ministers, empowering narrow interest group politics.ConclusionsDespite global political attention, the WTO process contributed little to emergency vaccine production, suggesting a pressing need for reforms aimed at more efficient and equitable multilateral processes.

Adopted in 2010 as a supplementary agreement to the 1992 Convention on Biological Diversity, the Nagoya Protocol (NP) mandates the fair and equitable sharing of benefits arising from the use of genetic resources provided by Indigenous peoples. Member states must newly enact or amend domestic laws to align with the NP. Consequently, many countries are currently implementing legislative, administrative, and policy measures to ensure fair benefit sharing from the use of Indigenous genetic resources. We examined the inclusion of intellectual property (IP) protection in the sharing of benefits from research and development that utilizes Indigenous genetic resources. The NP does not specify guidelines for IP‐related benefit sharing, leaving each member state to establish its own rules. We used an economics‐based approach to explore the optimal scope and duration of IP protection for maximizing stakeholder interests, including those of Indigenous peoples, at the national level. The optimal duration of IP protection was when the marginal social cost and benefit of IP protection were equal. When this point occurred varied depending on various factors, such as the type of genetic resources in the country, existence of alternatives, number of users, and competing actors. The optimal scope of IP protection was when the social benefit of investment in fundamental research equaled the social benefit of application development. Likewise, this point of implementation also varied based on various factors, such as the type, uniqueness, potential for further discovery, and diversity of providers in the country. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The importance of studying the protection of intellectual property rights in the face of modern challenges and threats, changes in Russia’s economic paradigm, and the search for new competitive advantages in the global economy is undisputed. The article aims to analyze the selected cross-border aspects of the administrative protection of intellectual property based on a review of Russian judicial practice. In this research, the formal-legal, comparative-legal, historical methods, as well as method of system analysis of the judiciary acts are used. The analysis of judicial practice in administrative cases related to intellectual property identified by the customs authorities reveals several problem areas. These issues include the competence of customs authorities in implementing customs control of goods containing intellectual property items, the use of expert procedures, the participation of the right holder in such litigation, and the exhaustion of intellectual property rights in the context of sanctions against Russia. Regarding the competence of customs authorities in the field of administrative protection of intellectual property rights, clear limits of such competence are defined, particularly in relation to the cross-border movement of goods under customs control. It is concluded that customs protection of intellectual property is limited to part of the intellectual property during cross-border movement. The article emphasizes the significant role of expert procedures in administrative cases related to intellectual property involving customs authorities. Arguments are presented against the use of opinions issued by copyright holders, and the participation of the copyright holder in the administrative protection of exclusive rights in the cross-border movement of goods is assessed. Special attention is paid to the principle of rights exhaustion and its implementation in judicial practice, particularly in the context of strengthening the sanctions regime against Russia and the partial legalization of parallel imports. The article concludes that cross-border protection of intellectual rights is positioned as an element of the entire system of legal protection of intellectual rights.

This article examines the philosophical principles behind copyright laws and evaluates how they apply to AI-generated content. First, the philosophical justifications of property are revisited, which encompasses intellectual property and copyright as specific forms of property. The second part evaluates how well AI-generated content fits these justifications, particularly regarding autonomous AI-generated content, for which copyright can be argued on such justifications. The third part analyses post-2022 literature on AI-generated content, finding that the prevailing consensus opposes granting copyright to autonomous AI works, contrary to the support provided by philosophical principles. The gap between the conclusions based on philosophical principles and on the expert consensus is bridged by the reliance on the human exceptionalism axiom that establishes human creations as deserving of copyright by opposition to those of AI tools. The article concludes that this human exceptionalism axiom not only goes against the philosophical principles but also lacks practical application. Instead, a utilitarian approach to copyright for automated AI works is favoured, as it provides applicable answers to today's questions on copyright and AI. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper, I consider the construction of patents as social practices. The goal is to observe patents in action, that is, to catch patents in the act of becoming patents. This method of “following the action” is well established in the sociology of science. Similar consideration of the artifices by which a new patent is staged reveals parallels to the known staging of technical papers, including the recruitment of rhetorical allies, se¬mantic fortification against subsequent challenges, and trials of cognitive strength. In each situation, assertions become stabilized facts only if subsequent recipients are in¬duced to accept them as such. However, the patent is formed in a process that largely sidesteps the mechanisms of peer review and material experimentation, substituting in¬stead legal and procedural affordances to facilitate closure. Thus, following the action from which the stabilized patent is fabricated reveals the patent as a uniquely legal, rather than technical, social object.

Artificial intelligence (AI), in the form of machine learning systems, is becoming widely deployed across many industries to facilitate the production of new technical or expressive works. Among other applications, these technologies promise rapid product design and creation, often exceeding the capacity of human creators. Commentators and policy makers have responded to these developments with a flood of literature analyzing the ways in which AI systems might challenge our existing regimes of intellectual property. But such discussions have thus far focused on entirely the wrong questions, misunderstanding the nature of the changes that AI brings to creative development. Intellectual property is generally styled as a solution to the “appropriability” or “public goods” problem in creative and innovative production: offering a legally enhanced incentive to invest in goods that are expensive to produce, but cheap to appropriate. But cost savings from AI systems will largely occur at a different point in the production process. AI systems promise (or threaten) to lower the cost of initial development of creative goods, potentially displacing human creators. Although machine learning systems are realistically unlikely ever to provide a complete substitute for human creative inputs, their incorporation into creative production will in effect automate the generative phases of the creative development process, substantially lowering the cost of the initial stage of production. Like other cost-saving industrial automation, this can be expected to displace human labor and redefine human roles in production. The history of past automated labor displacements teaches us something of what will occur as creativity is automated. In this light, I begin to reframe the discussion of intellectual property and artificial intelligence, showing the impact machine learning will have on human creativity and innovation, and the implications these changes for intellectual property doctrine and policy. In particular, I show that cheap substitutes for human creativity will drive a shift toward forms of intellectual property that certify authenticity rather than those that incentivize production and distribution. Armed with this understanding, we can begin to address the question of how to foster human engagement in an age of synthetic creativity.

A graphical user interface is a fundamental part of any software application as it enables users to interact with an application’s functionality, allowing interaction between computer software and hardware. The hybrid nature is a feature of GUIs. Therefore, it can qualify for all three forms of intellectual property protection: patent, copyright, and trademark. Each of these three forms has its pros and cons in terms of protecting graphical user interfaces. However, industrial design rights eventually seem to be the best system for protecting graphical user interfaces. Therefore, this study mainly focuses on the industrial design protection for the GUIs as well as the industrial design protection of GUIs in WTO member states, and in some cases, a comparison has been made with the Iranian legal system. A review of different legal systems indicates that in cases where the user interface is to be supported in more than one country, and at the international level, some points such as the scope of protection, filing routes and priority rights should be considered, and suggestions have been presented for modification of the protection system of GUIs as well as synchronization of protections. Furthermore, there are legal issues with respect to cloud computing and graphical user interfaces that need to be considered, including the protection of the intellectual property of both the user and the provider.

The article is devoted to the problem of regulating parallel imports in the countries of the Eurasian region, which is significant in the conditions of the modern world economy. The relevance of this issue is related to the economic sanctions applied to such states of the Eurasian region as the Russian Federation and the Republic of Belarus. The legal regulation of issues of protection of intellectual property rights in Russia, Belarus, Kazakhstan, China, and Azerbaijan is analyzed. Special attention is paid to the consideration of the practice of the Constitutional Court of the Russian Federation, as well as legal acts regulating the rights of both copyright holders and importers and consumers, who are subject to the consequences of certain decisions of copyright holders who do not consent to the import of goods into different states.Aim. Research of the legal regulation of the institution of parallel imports in the states of the Eurasian region in the context of economic sanctions.Tasks. Analysis of regulations governing the protection of intellectual property rights in the states of the Eurasian region, research of the main directions of parallel imports in the states of the Eurasian region, as well as identification of the main legal problems associated with the legalization of parallel imports in the region.Methods. Comparative legal and cross-temporal analysis of international and national regulations in the field of antitrust, copyright and customs law, as well as the study and analysis of general scientific literature and the formation of one’s own conclusions during the research.Results. As a rule, the states of the Eurasian region have established the national principle of exhaustion of rights to a trademark, and the international principle is used as an exception for certain groups of goods. The legalization of parallel imports raises several formal questions about the compliance of permission to import without the consent of the copyright holder with the international obligations of various states.Conclusions. In connection with the introduction of economic sanctions against some states of the Eurasian region, parallel imports are an effective mechanism for protecting the domestic market from abuses by copyright holders who unreasonably deny importers the right to distribute goods. Also, one of the methods to neutralize the consequences of sanctions regulation is to use the markets of other countries in the Eurasian region, which do not directly prohibit parallel imports.

This article identifies efficiency, certainty, and agility as essential facilitators of a copyright system's ability to attract foreign direct investment (FDI) to the cultural and creative industries in today's knowledge economy. The article further provides a set of principles and rules that enable these characteristics in copyright law. Whereas some of these copyright principles and rules are inherently compatible and, hence, can concurrently serve the efficiency, certainty, and agility of copyright law, the co-existence of some of them requires legislative and judicial balancing, as neither of them should defeat the purpose of the other. Furthermore, given the role that legal efficiency, certainty, and agility play in the sustainability of copyright law, legislatures should weigh these characteristics in the copyright law balance when enacting or amending copyright statutes. Courts also should consider these qualities when reconciling competing copyright law interests via statutory interpretation. Both types of balancing are necessary to ensure that the economic competitive advantage of copyright law does not prejudice its fairness foundations. From a business strategy perspective, firms in the cultural and creative industry may want to consider the efficiency, certainty, and agility of a copyright system when choosing their investment destinations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The investment activity is diverse and can be carried out with the use of intellectual property rights in accordance with the current international and Russian investment law. The article aims to identify the specifics of the application of intellectual property rights as investments and the implementation of intellectual investments, i.e. investments endowed into intellectual property rights. The objectives of the study are to consider the categories of an investment and object of investment activity, intellectual property, exclusive and other intellectual rights, as well as to analyze and determine the features of legal regulation of the activity in question at the international and national levels in the Russian Federation. Based on the results of the systematic analysis with the use of formal legal, comparative and other research methods, it is concluded that investments as a property in a broad sense may include both exclusive and other non-personal intellectual property rights to the results of intellectual activity and equated means of individualization of goods, works, services and enterprises. At the same time, they exclude intellectual property itself as a set of various types of intangible products, moral and other personal non-proprietary intellectual rights by virtue of their inalienable and non-transferable character. It is argued to be the same with respect to the object of investment activity, i.e. the property which the investment is endowed in and is capable to bring income to the investor in the future. Investments into such intellectual property rights can be called as intellectual investments.The legal regulation of investment activity with the use of intellectual property rights has a dual character (in the sense that it is carried out by different investment legislative acts with the similar subject of their regulation) and depends on the type of a particular object used. If intellectual property rights are invested in fixed capital, then they are to be recognized as capital investments and are governed by the Federal Law of February 25,1999 No. 39-FZ “On Investment Activity in the Russian Federation Carried out in the Form of Capital Investments”. If intellectual property rights are used as the object of investment activity, i.e. where investments are endowed in, such intellectual investments are subject to the regulation by the Law of the RSFSR of June 26, 1991 No. 1488-1 “On Investment Activity in the RSFSR”.

Objective: this article aims to answer the following questions: 1. Can generative artificial intelligence be a subject of copyright law? 2. What risks the unregulated use of generative artificial intelligence systems can cause? 3. What legal gaps should be filled in to minimize such risks?Methods: comparative legal analysis, sociological method, concrete sociological method, quantitative data analysis, qualitative data analysis, statistical analysis, case study, induction, deduction.Results: the authors identified several risks of the unregulated usage of generative artificial intelligence in the creative industry, among which are: violation of copyright and labor law, violation of consumers rights and the rise of public distrust in government. They suggest that a prompt development of new legal norms can minimize these risks. In conclusion, the article constants that states have already begun to realize that the negative impact of generative artificial intelligence on the creative industry must not be ignored, hence the development of similar legal regulations in states with completely different regimes.Scientific novelty: the article provides a comprehensive study of the impact of generative artificial intelligence on the creative industry from two perspectives: the perspective of law and the perspective of the industry. The empirical basis of it consists of two international surveys and an expert opinion of a representative of the industry. This approach allowed the authors to improve the objectivity of their research and to obtain results that can be used for finding a practical solution for the identified risks. The problem of the ongoing development and popularization of generative artificial intelligence systems goes beyond the question “who is the author?” therefore, it needs to be solved by introduction of other than the already existing mechanisms and regulations - this point of view is supported not only by the results of the surveys but also by the analysis of current lawsuits against developers of generative artificial intelligence systems.Practical significance: the obtained results can be used to fasten the development of universal legal rules, regulations, instruments and standards, the current lack of which poses a threat not only to human rights, but also to several sectors within the creative industry and beyond.

Objective: to substantiate the mechanisms of legal protection of intellectual property objects created with the use of artificial intelligence.Methods: the use of artificial intelligence to create works that are traditionally considered copyright objects was investigated with a set of general scientific and theoretical-legal methods of scientific cognition, including comparison, analogy and synthesis. In addition, the practice of using artificial intelligence, including neural networks, to create such works was considered in several aspects on the basis of retrospective and multifactor analysis.Results: the paper summarizes the current practice of using artificial intelligence to create works that traditionally belong to intellectual property objects (texts, images, music, software), taking into account the formulated scientific and legal positions. Several qualitatively different variants of the use of artificial intelligence were identified. For each of these variants the mechanism of legal protection was proposed and the areas of their effective application were indicated. Proposals were made to regulate the legal protection of the results of artificial intelligence activity; this was made not in the paradigm of competing doctrines, but by combining several tools, each of them to be applied in a relevant situation.Scientific novelty: the paper presents ontological differentiation of the results of artificial intelligence activity and the corresponding mechanisms of their legal protection. The author propose to consider the results of activity created by artificial intelligence not as a single object of legal regulation, but as a set of externally similar, but ontologically different objects, each requiring a separate approach to legal protection.Practical significance: the ontological differentiation of the results of artificial intelligence activity and their corresponding legal protection mechanisms proposed in this paper is relevant both as a basis for further research and as proposals to supplement civil legislation.

This article examines a modern acute problem: the formation of academic integrity of future educational managers, who must not only learn the essence of the current laws of Ukraine regarding the protection of intellectual property and copyright during their studies in domestic specialized institutions of higher education. First of all, they must acquire a reputation, authority, even an aura of a kind of respectability of the image of a teacher-leader (a teacher is also for a team of colleagues, parents, and not only for pupils, students), which is important not only for themselves - as managers of pedagogical affairs, but also for pupils and students. - for your successful career. Therefore, they will have weight for valuable in science, because they are original, their author's possessions (as well as in high art) - material manifestations of individual imagination, so important from the point of view of authorship rights, intellectual property, and at the same time - from the point of view of morality: conscience, nobility, honesty, because all this integrally constitutes the true originality of the creative product, which is submitted to the review of the scientific and social public. Therefore, education of such personal traits can form a special kind of value competences of future managers of education - spiritual. And they will undoubtedly, over time, become characteristic not only of the most progressive educational and scientific community of Ukraine, but literally of the entire world. But the leitmotif of the article lies not in the utopian plane of ideal ideas about an ideal society, but in practical recommendations on methods of forming academic integrity in future educational managers. Thus, the assimilation by students of a whole series of laws of the current legislation of Ukraine on copyright and related to them, on copyright and protection of intellectual property should gradually, on education in the process of training and practice, be integrated in the minds of future managers, becoming a generator of the movement towards honest work for the good future generations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this article we explore the use of Intellectual Property Rights (IPRs) in the implementation of the Convention for the Safeguarding of the Intangible Cultural Heritage. In retracing the ambiguous role accorded to IPRs since the drafting of the Convention and considering the practice of the Organs of the Convention, we highlight discrepancies in the decisions and debates of the Intergovernmental Committee for the Safeguarding of the Intangible Cultural Heritage vis-à-vis IPRs. Drawing on our own anthropological and legal perspectives, we shed light on the fragmentation of different disciplinary standpoints and specialist knowledge in the practice of the Organs of the Convention, revealing how observed inconsistencies in the role of IPRs are neither acknowledged nor addressed. This makes the issue of IPRs a blind spot. Yet, 'working misunderstandings' facilitate rather than hinder successful interaction among the many players within the Convention, allowing different, and sometimes contradictory, stances to imperfectly coexist. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]