Guidebook to Intellectual Property

This is a unique book about Intellectual Property. It is aimed not only at law students studying the subject but also at interested users of IP - business people, inventors, scientists, designers and the like. It provides an outline of the basic legal principles which underpin and reguilate the subject, educatuing the reader as to the shape of the law. However, critically, it also gives insight into how the system actually works. You cannot understand chess by merely learning the rules - you also have to know how the game is played: so too with Intellectual Property.

To achieve its object the authors deliberately avoid technicalities: keeping things simple, yet direct. There are no footnotes to distract. Although cases are, inevitably, referred to, they are explained in a pithy, accessible manner. The authors try wherever possible to be both serious and light-hearted at the same time.

All major areas of IP - patents, trade marks, copyright and designs - are covered, along with briefer treatment of other rights and subjects such as breach of confidence, plant varieties and databases.

A novice reader of this book should come away both with a clear outline of IP law and a feeling for how it works. Students will be able to put their more detailed study into perspective. Users will be able to understand better how IP affects them and their businesses.

Sir Robin Jacob is currently the Hugh Laddie Professor of Intellectual Property Law at University College London, having left the Court of Appeal of England and Wales in May 2011. Sir Robin was appointed a High Court Judge in 1993. He was appointed a Lord Justice of Appeal in October 2003 and continues to sit from time to time in the Court of Appeal and sometimes acts as an arbitrator or mediator.
Daniel Alexander QC is a barrister at 8 New Square Chambers and a Visiting Professor at University College London. His practice covers litigation in intellectual property cases, including IT and media/entertainment cases, competition, EC, commercial and administrative law.
Matthew Fisher is a Senior Lecturer at University College London, where he teaches and researches in intellectual property law. He has a special interest in patents, but stresses that this should not be held against him. He is the author of Fundamentals of Patent Law: Interpretation and Scope of Protection (Hart, 2007), which won the inaugural Inner Temple Young Author's Book Prize.