Ethics and Law in New Media : Week 8

Study the Anglo-American and Continental European school of IP

Write a short comparative analysis

The intellectual property rights differ in common law (Anglo-American) and civil law (Continental Europe) countries. In order to explore the differences in this particular field of law, we first need to compare both systems in general.

The main feature of civil law system is that the laws are written and codified and not determined. It is a Roman heritage. Common law is legal system developed through decisions of courts and similar tribunals (called case law), rather than through legislative statutes or executive action. Common law is law created and refined by judges: a decision in a currently pending legal case depends on decisions in previous cases and affects the law to be applied in future cases.

The legislation in Europe and other developed countries is advanced enough so that we can say that the area of legislation that concerns intellectual property rights would converge soon in those two types of law systems. A good examples for that are EU Directive 95/46/EC of the European Parliament and of the Council of 24 October 1995 on the protection of individuals with regard to the processing of personal data and on the free movement of such data and Berne Convention for the Protection of Literary and Artistic Works. However, the Anglo-American school of IP is historically considered to be more materially-oriented and put a greater emphasis on the possible tangible outcomes of the intellectual property. In contrary to that, Continental European school of IP concentrates more on various moral aspects on the intellectual property rights. The concept of copyright or a patent in USA is more profit-oriented that in Europe, where it is considered to be more as a tool to preserve an intellectual property rights.