Patents and medicines: the relationship between TRIPS and the human right to health

The question of access to drugs in developing countries is at present largely influenced by the TRIPS Agreement. TRIPS compliance in the field of health requires substantial changes to existing patent laws in some countries. These changes must be analysed in the context of the spread of epidemics like HIV/AIDS and in relation to other international obligations that states have, for instance, with regard to the human right to health.
Intellectual property rights treaties today have significant impacts on the realization of some human rights like the right to health. This article examines the extent to which TRIPS encompasses flexibility for developing countries to be able to foster better access to medicines. It also examines these issues from the point of view of human rights and considers, in particular, the ways in which the relationship between human rights and intellectual property can be improved in international law.     

The Problems with Patents: A Less than Optimistic Reading of the Future

This article examines a number of problems associated with patents. These are aspects of patents (and patent law) that are masked by conventional discourse that frequently equates strong patent protections with innovation and, ultimately, economic growth. This article will discuss: patents' links with knowledge and expertise; infrastructural requirements; innovation incentive structures; coercive tendencies (via high litigation and transactions costs); and global ‘harmonization' agreements (specifically TRIPs). In sum, it provides a glimpse of why patent law matters for understanding today's political economy and why global inequalities will continue to grow unless the international socio‐legal landscape changes substantially.     

The Graver Tank Litigation in the Supreme Court

The very generality of the patent statutes in American law places a heavy burden on the courts and the patent bar for the development of patent law and policy. It is particularly important that we examine periodically how well the courts have performed that function and how well the bar has supported that effort. This article will focus on an earlier era in patent law—in particular the process surrounding the second Graver Tank decision, in the 1949 Term of the Supreme Court—to see what lessons that experience may hold for present day. ¹     

论柯克的贸易自由思想

柯克的贸易自由思想主要包括通过法律约束国王颁授垄断特许权、维护臣民的贸易自由以及鼓励臣民从事合法贸易等内容。柯克秉持普通法传统和贸易自由思想,对国王颁授垄断特许权进行了长期的抗争,最终推动议会通过了《反垄断法》。这部法令集中体现了柯克的贸易自由思想,否定了大多数垄断特许权的合法性,保障了臣民的贸易自由,并创设了世界上最早的专利制度。柯克的贸易自由思想有利于消除贸易领域中的封建因素,推动自由贸易的发展,促进社会财富向资本的转化。     

我国地下空间权法律制度的建立与完善

城市土地资源随着当今社会发展日显稀缺和珍贵,地下空间日益成为人们生活拓展的新领域。我国《物权法》虽然明确规定了地下空间的用益物权性质,但与其开发利用的发展实践相联系,目前在立法上尚存在诸多的漏洞。本文从地下空间权作为物权的合理性出发,就如何建立与完善其相关的法律制度进行初步探究。     

近代以来中外关于保护知识产权的谈判

国人保护知识产权的观念,萌生于甲午战争前后。在知识产权中,专利权最早为国人所认识。但国人真正地比较广泛地关注知识产权,并对其有比较清晰、深刻的理解,却是在清末新政时期。此时,中外首次就保护知识产权进行了谈判。在保护知识产权谈判中,保护商标的谈判最为顺利。保护专利权、版权的谈判,比较艰难。经过谈判,中国与各方还是达成了一个互赢的结果。然而对保护知识产权,特别是保护版权,国人认识还是比较模糊。这也说明,保护知识产权．在中国还任重道远。     

The Evolution of Glass Bottles for Carbonated Drinks

Abstract

This paper traces briefly the history of early attempts to copy natural mineral waters and of the pioneer manufacturers of carbonated drinks. It deals with the shapes of cork-closed bottles used in the 19th century—in particular the ovate container—and the more important of the patent bottles devised by such inventors as Hiram Codd and Dan Rylands, to whom particular reference is made. Bottles for alcoholic drinks are excluded from this survey.     

Legal Literacy and Immovable Property: Laws,Norms and Practices in Colombia

An equitable gender distribution of property ownership may be enhanced or limited by family law, individual knowledge of the law, and social norms. South America's laws of equal inheritance by sex and birth order and equal distribution of property upon divorce provide the basis of a gender‐equitable distribution of property ownership. This report of a qualitative case study exploring the gendered knowledge of immovable property laws and the practice of patterns of property ownership in central Colombia provides insights into the gap between law and practice caused by lack of information, social norms, gendered access to legal titles, a complex legal system and high transaction costs. It argues for greater attention to titling, legal procedures, legal education and legal advice to secure effective immovable property ownership for women.     

The rights of a Florida wife: slavery, U.S. expansion, and married women's property law

Civil law rules were adopted in Florida that granted married women property rights long before legal reforms occurred in northern states. This article analyzes white wives' property and law in Florida between 1820 and 1860. Initially, married women's property rights were inadvertently protected by treaty law and limited to women who married before 1818. Wives' right to own separate property in Florida was subsequently reconfirmed in statute and extended to include later marriages. In contrast, nonwhites generally lost the rights and property they had enjoyed under Spain's civil law in the same period. This contrast reveals that in Florida (and other southern borderlands) it was not concern for women, or simply legal precedent, but the desire to incorporate new territory and expand slavery that influenced the development of marital property law. This challenges previous histories, which have excluded the earlier acts in the Southern borderlands and emphasized those passed in the Northeast beginning in the late 1840s. While those later acts were influenced by the early woman's rights movement and by concern for families reduced to poverty during the rise of market capitalism, this case study indicates that expansion of United States territory and slavery were responsible for the earlier married women's property rights in southern borderland territories such as Florida.     

The development of the conjugal bond in late medieval Bohemia

In late medieval Bohemia the focus of the family became more and more the relationship between husband and wife at the expense of the husband's male kin group. Where the tie of loyalty to one's male lineage and its future welfare prevailed, disposals of property after death restricted a widow's rights only to her dowry. The law of the land and custom generally supported this practice. However, more and more from the fourteenth to the early sixteenth century men gave their widows greater social security and authority over their estates and children, in the process excluding their own male kin.These conclusions arise from a numerical analysis of dowry contracts and last wills and testaments in three modest sized towns in Bohemia. The analysis shows that most men ensured their widow's secure title to the family inheritance either alone or jointly with their children. It also shows that the rate of property arrangements favouring the wife increased in the course of the centuries examined.     

从农村合作化运动看国家构造中的集体及集体产权

集体产权不是一个主流经济学的产权概念,它只在中国才有财产和法律上的双重意义。伴随着农业合作化运动的互助组、初级社、高级社三个阶段,集体及集体产权也经历了一个萌芽、雏形、形成的过程。     

The development of the conjugal bond in late medieval Bohemia

In late medieval Bohemia the focus of the family became more and more the relationship between husband and wife at the expense of the husband's male kin group. Where the tie of loyalty to one's male lineage and its future welfare prevailed, disposals of property after death restricted a widow's rights only to her dowry. The law of the land and custom generally supported this practice. However, more and more from the fourteenth to the early sixteenth century men gave their widows greater social security and authority over their estates and children, in the process excluding their own male kin. These conclusions arise from a numerical analysis of dowry contracts and last wills and testaments in three modest sized towns in Bohemia. The analysis shows that most men ensured their widow's secure title to the family inheritance either alone or jointly with their children. It also shows that the rate of property arrangements favouring the wife increased in the course of the centuries examined.     

论数字版权的刑法保护

数字版权的刑法保护是近几年来兴起的一项交叉且边缘性的研究领域。随着数字产业在我国的发展,大量的版权违法犯罪也相伴而生,然而中国现阶段侵犯知识产权犯罪立法却存在着诸多弊端。笔者建议,通过立法,扩大刑法保护对象,修改犯罪行为方式,进一步加大著作权的刑法保护力度,完善数字版权的刑法保护体系,从而达到更好地保护网络知识产权的目的。     

Precarious Territory: Property Law,Housing, and the Socio-Spatial Order

Most of us access shelter over land over which other people have legally sanctioned dominant interests and powers, creating systemic relations of security and vulnerability that I term precarious property. We all live inside the territory of property, but do so under different terms. Rather than thinking of the territory of property as an exclusive space of insiders and outsiders, I think of it as a relational technology that organises forms of conditional spatial access. Territorialised expressions of law play a crucial role in organising such relations through a “property space” that frames property’s participants, their interactions, their alternatives to transacting, and the meanings of property itself. Thinking territorially about precarious property offers us both analytical and ethico-political insights, I suggest.     

基于专利地图的地方产业技术演化路径研究——以广西制糖业为例

借助专利信息这一有效的技术信息载体形式,论文从专利地图的角度分析产业技术创新活动的演进与变化来把握广西地方产业核心知识演化,通过可视化数据挖掘工具,绘制出基于专利地图的广西地方产业技术领域演化路径图。研究表明,甘蔗制糖业作为广西地方特色产业技术演化较为缓慢并且缺乏内生的持续的创新驱动力量,但是产业技术演化趋势是存在的。最后从国际技术引进及地方化、产权保护与制度建设、加强内部交流促进创新协同等角度提出对策建议。     

Land as fictitious commodity: the continuing evolution of women's land rights in Uganda

In sub-Saharan Africa, colonial influences have altered traditional practices as a way to manage that which Polanyi labeled as ‘fictitious commodities’ of land, labor, and money. Land has now become a highly marketable commodity and an intrinsic part of the global economy. Over the past century, Uganda's land rights have evolved from communal rights to that of male-dominated, individual ownership practices that have excluded women. Despite constitutional provisions, which confer title of both a deceased husband's property rights and equal rights to property within a marriage to a wife, postcolonial patriarchal tradition prevails. This article examines historical changes in land rights in Uganda and discusses the impact of shifts in land rights from communal ownership to individual tenure, altering power structures and attempting to create marketable land title. The Ugandan women's movement's opposition to policies and implementation of laws that exclude women has been unable to facilitate the required changes in unbiased access to land rights, despite apparent victories in revisions to the letter of the law. Situated within contemporary interpretations of tradition and pressures of market demand, this article shows that women's access to landownership and use are restricted by misinterpretation of traditional law and a lack of enforcement of contemporary legal rights. To illustrate the impact of a lack of access to land, this article examines an empirical case study of widowed subsistence farmers in southern Uganda. Women in Uganda continue to lose ground, quite literally, decreasing the possibility of gender equity in terms of land.     

20世纪80年代的婚姻法律与婚姻家庭变迁

颁布于中国全面改革开放起步时期的1980年《婚姻法》,反映了国家在婚姻家庭领域的法制重建以及社会转型带来的家庭婚姻制度的变化。在社会上引起较大反响的主要有三个方面:第一,明确了夫妻财产制,人们的个人财产权利意识增强;第二,实行计划生育政策,但由于重男轻女思想的影响,使性别选择问题更突出地表现出来;第三,明确把感情破裂作为离婚的条件,但“感情破裂”的衡量标准很难掌握,司法部门在处理离婚案件时仍有很大困难。总之,1980年《婚姻法》是一部承前启后的法律,它既是对1950年《婚姻法》的继承与发展,又通过20年的司法实践,为2001年《婚姻法》的修正案的制定作了法律上的铺垫。     

‘Vague Native Rights to Land’: British Imperial Policy on Native Title and Custom in New Zealand, 1837–53

What is often referred to as a common law doctrine of aboriginal or customary title neither underpinned imperial policies towards Māori property rights in the 1830s and 1840s nor was it viewed as a settled or broadly accepted legal doctrine. Rather, critics of imperial policies applying to New Zealand deployed these legal sources in order to challenge and influence the workings of imperial policy on British settlement within New Zealand. The particular emphasis of such policy was on disciplining the extent of such settlement and providing a land fund from crown grants. Imperial policy-makers did not endorse these legal sources despite their use in the decision of the New Zealand Supreme Court in Regina v Symonds (1847). In this context, there was no consensual legal view or approach as to the nature or content of indigenous property rights. Ultimately, in the face of disagreement, diverse views of the nature and extent of Māori property rights persisted. The perceived non-justiciability of such rights meant that political spaces rather than the courts were of ongoing significance to characterising and debating such rights.     

浅析先占取得制度之构建

先占取得制度作为原始取得的一种方式,有着深厚的历史渊源和确立价值,当今世界很多国家的民事立法均不同程度地使这一制度得以体现。可见,其作为取得无主财产所有权的一种手段仍具有较强的实用性。而我国的这一制度却长期为国家公权所取代,致使私权得不到有效保护。尤其是在新近出台的《物权法》之中,这项制度也没有被确立,这对于我国民法的完善不能不说是一个遗憾。今后,在我国民事立法中应填补这项空白,以维护其私法本色。