Is copyright blind to the visual?

This article argues that, with respect to the copyright protection of works of visual art, the general uneasiness that has always pervaded the relationship between copyright law and concepts of creativity produces three anomalous results. One of these is that copyright lacks much in the way of a central concept of 'visual art' and, to the extent that it embraces any concept of the 'visual', it is rooted in the rhetorical discourse of the Renaissance. This means that copyright is poorly equipped to deal with modern developments in the visual arts. Secondly, the pervasive effect of rhetorical discourse appears to have made it particularly difficult for copyright law to strike a meaningful balance between protecting creativity and permitting its use in further creative works. Thirdly, just when rhetorical discourse might have been useful in identifying the significance and materiality of the unique one-off work of visual art, copyright law chooses to ignore its implications

The Counterpart Principle of Analogical Support by Structural Similarity

We propose and investigate an Analogy Principle in the context of Unary Inductive Logic based on a notion of support by structural similarity which is often employed to motivate scientific conjectures

Trade secrets law

The standardisation of trade secret protection was one of the goals of the TRIPs Agreement of 1998. Nevertheless, substantial differences in this protection remain across jurisdictions. When defining the optimal scope of trade secrets law, lawmakers should be aware that strong trade secret protection is likely to promote inventiveness, but it is also likely to hinder the diffusion of knowledge and prevent competition

Strength of Protection for Geographical Indications: Promotion Incentives and Welfare Effects

We address the question of how the strength of protection for geographical indications (GIs) affects the GI industry\u27s promotion incentives, equilibrium market outcomes, and the distribution of welfare. Geographical indication producers engage in informative advertising by associating their true quality premium (relative to a substitute product) with a specific label emphasizing the GI\u27s geographic origin. The extent to which the names/words of the GI label can be used and/or imitated by competing products—which depends on the strength of GI protection—determines how informative the GI promotion messages can be. Consumers’ heterogeneous preferences (vis-à-vis the GI quality premium) are modeled in a vertically differentiated framework. Both the GI industry and the substitute product industry are assumed to be competitive (with free entry). The model is calibrated and solved for alternative parameter values. Results show that producers of the GI and of the lower-quality substitute good have divergent interests: GI producers are better off with full protection, whereas the substitute good\u27s producers prefer intermediate levels of protection (but they never prefer zero protection because they benefit indirectly if the GI producers’ incentives to promote are preserved). For consumers and aggregate welfare, the preferred level of protection depends on the model\u27s parameters, with an intermediate level of protection being optimal in many circumstances

A gaming simulation approach to understanding blue ocean strategy development as a transition from traditional competitive strategy

Blue Ocean Strategy (BOS) has attracted a resurgence of interest following various market discontinuities, including digital disruption, the growth of the sharing economy and the development of ecosystems. BOS is a combination of value innovation and new markets, driving sustained higher performance through specific marketing activities, but it is difficult to conceive and implement. We outline five cases that use various transition paths to BOS through white spaces - with product extensions in the existing market. An important part of this transition are ‘blue ocean droplets’ which drive profitable growth through the transition and then onto a successful deployment of a blue ocean strategy. Blue ocean droplets drive profitable growth - simultaneously increasing volume sales, maintaining/increasing prices and maintaining/decreasing costs. We then use an inductive qualitative approach in a multi-team gaming simulation to examine drivers of firm performance. Higher than average performance is driven by repositioning in white spaces and execution of the three blue ocean droplets. Finally, we discuss implications for firms: execute a number of real options to follow one of several transition paths to a full BOS. This approach involves less downside risk than a full BOS approach, but can still be sustainably profitable, while also breaking the traditional value/cost trade-off