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Book
Author Alford, William P., author

Title To steal a book is an elegant offense : intellectual property law in Chinese civilization / William P. Alford
Published Stanford, Calif. : Stanford University Press, 1995
©1995

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Location Call no. Vol. Availability
 MELB  KT 4246 Alf/Tsa  AVAILABLE
Description ix, 222 pages : illustrations ; 23 cm
Series Studies in East Asian law
Studies in East Asian law.
Contents 1. Introduction -- 2. Don't Stop Thinking About ... Yesterday: Why There Was No Indigenous Counterpart to Intellectual Property Law in Imperial China -- 3. Learning the Law at Gunpoint: The Turn-of-the-Century Introduction of Western Notions of Intellectual Property -- 4. Squaring Circles: Intellectual Property Law with Chinese Characteristics for a Socialist Commodity Economy -- 5. As Pirates Become Proprietors: Changing Approaches Toward Intellectual Property on Taiwan -- 6. No Mickey Mouse Matter: U.S. Policy on Intellectual Property in Chinese Society
Summary This study examines the law of intellectual property in China from imperial times to the present. It draws on history, politics, economics, sociology, and the arts, and on interviews with officials, business people, lawyers, and perpetrators and victims of "piracy." The author asks why the Chinese, with their early bounty of scientific and artistic creations, are only now devising legal protection for such endeavours and why such protection is more rhetoric than reality on the Chinese mainland. In the process, he sheds light on the complex relation between law and political culture in China. The book goes on to examine recent efforts in the People's Republic of China to develop intellectual property law, and uses this example to highlight the broader problems with China's programme of law reform
Analysis Intellectual property History China
Bibliography Includes bibliographical references (pages 176-212) and index
Subject Intellectual property -- China -- History.
LC no. 94015742
ISBN 0804722706
0804729603
9780804722704
9780804729604