Privacy, Property And Personality: Civil Law Perspectives On

Description:
The protection of privacy and personality is one of the most fascinating issues confronting any legal system. This book provides a detailed comparative analysis of the laws relating to commercial exploitation of personality in France, Germany, the United Kingdom and the United States. It examines the difficulties in reconciling privacy and personality with intellectual property rights in an individual's identity and in balancing such rights with the competing interests of freedom of expression and freedom of competition. This analysis will be useful for lawyers in legal systems which have yet to develop a sophisticated level of protection for interests in personality. Equally, lawyers in systems which provide a higher level of protection will benefit from the comparative insights into determining the nature and scope of intellectual property rights in personality, particularly questions relating to assignment, licensing, and post-mortem protection.

Review:
' a much needed contribution to the literature in this field ... this book is well written and its thorough coverage makes it a valuable point of reference for all further research and debate in this area.' Modern Law Review

Table of Contents:
Preface; Table of cases; Table of statutes; Table of abbreviations; 1. Introduction; 2. Property, personality and unfair competition in England and Wales, Australia and Canada; 3. Privacy and personality in the common law systems; 4. German law; 5. French law; 6. Conclusions; Bibliography; Index.

Author Biography:
Huw Beverley-Smith is a Solicitor in the Intellectual Property and Technology Department at Field Fischer Waterhouse in London. he is also the author of The Commercial Appropriation of personality (Cambridge 2002). Ansgar Ohly is Professor of Civil Law and Intellectual Property Law at the University of Bayreuth, Germany. Until 2002 he was the lead of the Commonwealth Department of the Max-Planck Institute for Intellectual Property, Competition and Tax Law, Munich. Agnes Lucas-Schloetter is Lecturer in French law at the Ludwig-Maximilian University of Munich, Germany. Until 2003 she was a researcher at the Max-Planck Institute for Intellectual Property, Competition and Tax Law, Munich.