The aim of this book is to investigate the history and rationale for the paradoxical extension of human rights to companies in the European Convention on Human Rights (ECHR) and to analyse the Court's jurisprudence on protection of companies' intellectual property in this light. The study shows how, before the adoption of the ECHR, the concepts of legal personality and possessions functioned as legal fictions in European civil and common law to facilitate ownership and sale of tangible and intangible property, shares, debts, securities and intellectual property. The Court's construction of the ambiguous text of Article 1 of the First Protocol and its application to corporate intellectual property rights is reviewed in this light and shown to have been initially anchored in the legal fictions of national laws and later expanded and reinforced by European Union law.

Explains the history and rationale for the protection of company's intellectual property as fundamental human rights in the ECHR.

About the Author
Aurora Plomer is Professor Emeritus of Intellectual Property and Human Rights at the University of Bristol. She has published numerous books and articles in peer-reviewed international journals on the interface between intellectual property, human rights and innovation. The research for this monograph was funded by a Major Research Fellowship from the Leverhulme Trust (MRF 2019-112).


Book Information
ISBN 9781108841771
Author Aurora Plomer
Format Hardback
Page Count 280
Imprint Cambridge University Press
Publisher Cambridge University Press