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37 - Closing the Gap: How EU Law Constrains National Rules Against Imitation

from C - (Un-)fairness

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  29 December 2020

Niklas Bruun
Affiliation:
Hanken School of Economics (Finland)
Graeme B. Dinwoodie
Affiliation:
Chicago-Kent College of Law
Marianne Levin
Affiliation:
Stockholm University Department of Law
Ansgar Ohly
Affiliation:
Ludwig Maximilian University of Munich Faculty of Law
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Summary

If imitation was simply bad, society could just proclaim it unfair. But it is not. Imitation is a lifeblood of economy and culture.2 It fuels progress because it facilitates diffusion of new ideas. As much as innovators push the boundary of our knowledge, imitators help to disseminate it. Intellectual property rights are a tool for achieving balance between innovators and imitators. They try to motivate innovators to come up with new ideas and commercialize them, while keeping imitators at bay for a while. This artificial lead time allows them to recoup R&D investments so that they are economically motivated to innovate again.

Type
Chapter
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Transition and Coherence in Intellectual Property Law
Essays in Honour of Annette Kur
, pp. 436 - 446
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 2021

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