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With the increasing complexity of societal and environmental problems in the Anthropocene, the use of both classification-based approaches, which provide in-depth understanding within disciplinary boundaries, and citation-based approaches, which provide interdisciplinary research, has been encouraged. However, there are limited comparisons of the knowledge networks produced between these two approaches, which compromises our capacity to manage technological development. This paper aims to investigate the similarities and differences of river technology networks produced using classification-based and citation-based approaches. The World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO) database from 1863 to 2020 was used as the data source. River technology systems contained three interactive subsystems: water demand, water supply, and water management, and the structure was measured using network-based metrics. It was found that river technology systems constructed using the classification-based and the citation-based approaches developed similarly in terms of their temporal, spatial, and compositional features. The structural differences were attributed to the addition of an external system that draws upon interdisciplinary knowledge beyond water resources. Both approaches can be used for guiding technology management, with the classification-based approach being more effective for understanding the content of innovations and the citation-based approach being more effective in gathering information beyond the water resource discipline. Technologies from more diverse disciplines should be encouraged to address increasingly complex water challenges.

Nanotechnology research uses specific properties of materials at the nanoscale to develop improved materials, devices, systems and therapeutics. There is a risk of overlapping patent claims and lack of distinction between nano-based and traditional patents due to the interdisciplinary nature of nanotechnology. There is an increasing trend of granted patents. The World Intellectual Property Organization and World Health Organization, regulatory and policy bodies, are working to make a comprehensive property right regulation for nanotechnology products. The USA, the leader of nanotechnology products, has made guidelines to make patent search easier for nano-based products. The European Patent Office has also created a new classification for nano-based inventions. Here we review the status of intellectual property rights protection of nanomaterial, environmental implications and application of nanotechnology in agriculture.

The global intellectual property (IP) regime is in the midst of a paradigm shift in favour of greater access to protected work. Current explanations of this paradigm shift emphasize the agency of transnational advocacy networks, but ignore the role of academics. Scholars interested in global IP politics have failed to engage in reflexive thinking. Building on the results from a survey of 1679 IP experts, this article argues that a community of academics successfully broke the policy monopoly of practitioners over IP expertise. They instilled some scepticism concerning the social and economic impacts of IP among their students as well as in the broader community of IP experts. They also provided expert knowledge that was widely amplified by non-governmental organizations (NGOs) and some intergovernmental organizations, acting as echo chambers to reach national decision makers. By making these claims, this article illustrates how epistemic communities actively collaborate with other transnational networks, rather than competing with them, and how they can promote a paradigm change by generating, rather than reducing, uncertainty.

As a result of both institutional proliferation and expansion, the international institutional environment has grown more complex. As such, scholars increasingly highlight what is described as the growing organisational or institutional density of the international system. Despite this, the concept of institutional density itself is rarely questioned. This paper explores the concept by critically examining the relationship between density and institutional proliferation. Focusing on formal international organisations, it considers the question of whether or not the creation of a new institution renders the institutional ‘playing field’ more crowded for new and the existing bodies. Drawing on a novel conception of the institutional governance space, it suggests that the creation of a new organisation in an area occupied by an existing body may have a more ambiguous impact on density than the existing accounts suggest. The governance space concept illustrates the potential for institutional proliferation to expand not only the population of international institutions, but also the number of concrete functions undertaken by these bodies and broader inter-subjective understandings about their appropriate role in global governance. Through this framework, it becomes apparent that the creation of a new international institution may expand the institutional playing field for both new and the existing bodies alike.

In the 1990s, the fight between North and South over intellectual property (IP) reached new heights. The result was the World Trade Organization's (WTO's) deeply contested agreement on Trade‐Related Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights (TRIPS). Widely resented by developing countries, TRIPS nonetheless permits them some hard‐won flexibility. Puzzling, however, is why some developing countries have used that flexibility and others have not. Even more curious is that despite securing some extra concessions, many of the poorest countries have made least use of them. For scholars of international political economy and law, this book is the first detailed exploration of the links between global IP politics and the implementation of IP reforms. It exposes how power politics occur not just within global trade talks but afterwards when countries implement agreements. For developing countries, TRIPS did not end the IP offensive. At the urging of lobbyists from large multinational companies, powerful countries backtracked on the flexibilities in TRIPS and pursued even stronger global IP rules. To prevent precedents for weaker IP standards in poorer countries, they issued threats to market access, aid, investment, and political alliances. Further, they used new trade deals and, more subtly, ‘capacity‐building’ (assisted by the World Intellectual Property Organization, among others) to leverage faster compliance and higher standards than TRIPS requires. Meanwhile, ‘pro‐development’ advocates from civil society, other UN agencies, and developing countries worked to counter ‘compliance‐plus’ pressures and defend the use of TRIPS flexibilities, sometimes with success. Within developing countries, most governments had little experience of IP law. They often deferred TRIPS implementation to IP offices cut‐off from trade politics and national policymaking, making them more vulnerable to the TRIPS‐plus agenda. In francophone Africa, regional IP arrangements magnified this effect.

The government of Armenia and the Next Page Foundation supported the Sixth International Forum of Translators and Publishers held in Yerevan from 5th to 8th November 2012. Antje Sorensen and Richard Balkwill from the International Publishers Association led a two-day workshop entitled ‘The Role of Copyright System in the Promotion of Publishing as a Cultural Industry’. Presentations on international perspectives on copyright and the mechanics of trading in translation and other rights were blended with discussion and debate. The international issues of digital open access and free information were of less concern to local publishers than the effective application of and compliance to recent copyright laws in the country. Piracy was still sapping publishers’ business and continuing to deter potential foreign collaboration and co-publishing deals. The forum was enriched with an extensive program of cultural events and social gatherings.

This article covers four issues. First, it examines evolving international conventions to determine whether countries, especially developed countries, can take any steps to inhibit offshoring with the objective of protecting jobs in their respective countries. Second, it looks at statistics from independent sources to see if outsourcing exceeds insourcing, or vice versa, in the case of the U.S. Third, it looks at trends in outsourcing in the legal arena. Fourth, it looks at the intellectual property aspects of outsourcing and presents a long-term vision on how this ticklish issue is likely to be addressed in the long-term.

The present study is aimed for the intellectual property rights holders and specialists in intellectual property law, that are invited to use, promote and implement arbitration as a winning alternative means of solving disputes. The author presents the arbitration as the main method of alternative dispute resolution and analyses the conditions in which arbitration may be used for settling disputes related to intellectual property rights. In this respect, the paper largely presents the main conditions: the dispute has to be liable for settlement by means of arbitration, the parties have to conclude an arbitration agreement, the arbitration agreement has to be valid and effective and the dispute has to be included in the provisions of the arbitration agreement. The author also reviews the types of arbitration used by the World Intellectual Property Organization Centre for Arbitration and Mediation, the World Trade Organization, the Romanian Copyright Office and the Court of International Commercial Arbitration attached to the Chamber of Commerce and Industry of Romania, presenting some ruling of arbitral tribunals concerning arbitrability issues.