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XML-related intellectual assets
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Abstract
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Information and technical applications on the Internet have come to
represent great economic values. At the same time it is a well-known fact
that the Web and similar digital networks challenge the conventional ways
of understanding and managing intellectual property rights. This gives rise
to a need for legal advice, but precise answers are rarely found in the law
itself. In this context, awareness of the predominating legal principles for
protecting DTDs and schemas, stylesheets, markup etc. already during system
development may reduce the uncertainty.
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Keywords
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Contents
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Setting the scene
The popularity of the Web as a publishing medium highlights the legal
issues surrounding electronic access to intellectual assets. This paper gives
an overview of how investments represented in a typical XML-application may
be protected by IPR.
Information as well as technical applications in the Internet environment
represent great economic values. But can we, for instance, consider a DTD
as equivalent to a so-called literary work and thus protected by copyright?
What about incorporating digitally available stylesheets into specially customised
XML-applications? Etc. Potential right owners seek legal advice and look for
practical solutions to the need to protect their works.
The widespread use of web technologies including XML methods adds new
dimensions to the legal scene. In a historical perspective the national sovereignty
characterising a state’s possibility of regulating physical objects
has during the years of ICT revolution been heavily influenced by the Internet
as a global market place for immaterial objects. This gives rise to a need
for revisions, adjustments and completely new legal regulations. International
conventions, recommendations and case law developments are of course also
important in this respect.
The rapid development of information technology represents, however,
a core difficulty from a regulatory point of view. Attempts over the years
to accomplish so-called technically neutral legislation do not fully respond
to the need for legal clarifications. This has led to a situation in which
technical means of ensuring intellectual property rights and enhancing security
of the management of legally relevant documents have come to have an increased
impact in practice. A recent example of this development trend is the so-called DPRL which is intended to support
commercial use of digital works of different kinds (see further http://www.oasis-open.org/cover/dprl.html).
This background description boils down to a need to discuss XML both
from the point of view of (a) intellectual assets and (b) as a potential method
of ensuring copyright protection and securing legal documents in general.
The focus here will be on substantive law issues associated with the use of
XML. Section 2 of this paper, therefore, gives a brief overview of the legal
state of the art concerning intellectual property rights in an IT perspective.
The next part (Section 3) presents the major issues associated with regarding
XML in a broad sense as a possible object of IPR. Finally, a few concluding
remarks are presented.
Previous
Table of Contents
The legal state of the art
The nature of intellectual property rights may roughly be described
as a way to “encourage the publication or use of inventions, designs
and other materials (‘protected material’) by providing legal
protection to enable the owner to control their publication and use.” 1 More precisely, the owner of a legal right to intellectual property
is enabled to (a) apply the protected material himself, (b) exclusively or
non-exclusively license the intellectual property rights in the protected
material to others and (c) assign the rights to others.2 The notion of “intellectual property rights” indicates
that this legal concept comprises a collection of rights including patents,
copyright, design rights, trademarks etc. In an XML environment, copyright
and trademarks regulations are of major interest, and these rights, accordingly,
will be at the centre of attention in the following pages.
Copyright
Copyright is a property right aimed at preventing undue copying of original works, ranging from fiction to computer programs.
There is a requirement of originality attached to copyright which relates
to the expression of thought and not to the originality of ideas.3 In practice this means that a most brilliant software solution in
terms of logic design may in fact not be entitled to copyright protection,
at the same time as a functionally very poor computer program might be.
The EC Directive on the legal protection of computer programs –
the so-called Software Directive – states in its Preamble that “no
tests as to the qualitative or aesthetic merits of the program should be applied”.
Furthermore Article 1 (3) of the Directive states that“(a) computer
program shall be protected if it is the author’s own creation. No other
criteria shall be applied to determine the eligibility for protection.”
In addition to the fundamental economic rights attached to copyright
(the right to copy the work and issue the copies to the public, perform the
work to the public etc.) there are the so-called moral rights. This copyright
feature generally gives the author of a work a right to be identified in any
copy of the work which is issued to the public. The moral rights also includes
a right to object to any derogatory treatment of the work.4
Ownership of copyright falls to the first author of a work or authors
if the work is a result of joint effort.5 There are no formalities (such as registration) attached to the
commencement of copyright. The well-known copyright symbol © is, for
instance, no general legal requisite for obtaining protection. However, the
Universal Copyright Convention prescribes the use of the ©-symbol to
ensure international protection.
The duration of copyright varies depending on the type of work which
the protected material represents.
The legal framework governing copyright protection is comparatively
international. In spite of this incentive for harmonisation, national regulatory
regimes vary considerably. The global infrastructure of the Internet adds
of course to the picture of a complex legal setting, for instance, with regard
to the selection of jurisdiction.
Important international legal instruments:
- The Berne Convention for the protection of literary and artistic works from 18866
- The Rome Convention for the protection of performers, producers of phonograms and broadcasting organisations from 19617
- The Universal Copyright Convention
- The 1995 Agreement on Trade Related Aspects of Intellectual Property Law (The TRIPs Agreement)8
- The WIPO Copyright Treaty 1996
Important EC Directives:
- The EC Directive 91/250, on the Legal Protection of Computer Programs
- (The Software Directive)
- The EC Directive 96/9 on the Legal Protection of Databases
- (The Database directive)
- The EC Directive 89/04 on the Harmonisation of Trade Mark Law
- (The Trade Mark Directive)
Trademarks
The overall purpose of trademarks is to identify and distinguish the
source of a good or service in a commercial setting. A trademark may take
the form of “words, symbols, slogans, designs, characters, packaging,
sounds, smells, and colors as well as product configurations”.9 The detailed legal regulation of trademarks varies from one jurisdiction
to another. Protection either requires registration or appears as a result
of widespread use.
In an IT perspective, different forms of identifiers are of particular
interest. In a broad sense the term identifiers may comprise domain names,
public identifiers of different kinds as well as hidden metadata-tags. In
an IPR-perspective this raises the question of possible protection as trademarks.
Without here going into any details, it is worth mentioning that domain
names may be protected as trademarks. A closely related question concerns
that of hidden metadata tags containing a competitor’s trademark for
the purpose of improved retrieval of one’s own page by the search mechanisms
of AltaVista, Yahoo, Googles and the like. This use of metadata may constitute
a trademark infringement. A third question concerns whether public identifiers
of different kinds may be covered by an intellectual property right. The answer
is “yes” as titles are protected. It would, for instance, not
be wise to use the word “Scientology Bible” as an identifier for
something that in fact contains critique of this church.
XML-related IPR-objects
Introduction
From the point of view of substantive IT law it may not be considered
very much of a new type of challenge to integrate XML into the legal framework
of intellectual property rights, merely a matter of adjusting the interpretation
and application of existing rules and cases to new circumstances. But it does
require an in-depth understanding of the predominant legal principles in the
field on the one hand and the functionality of this particular IT-related
method for document management on the other.
The widespread use, for example, of electronic documents, automatic
legal decision making, and the emergent virtual organisations have indeed
changed the fundamental legal infrastructure in many areas, such as contract
law, penal law, administrative law etc. To conclude, the understanding and
management of law in the information society have both in practice and in
theory turned out to be rather complicated.
A major explanation is, as already mentioned, that the law by tradition
places an emphasis on the regulation of physical objects. The immateriality
of the information on the Internet makes it therefore necessary to (a) investigate
to what extent the existing legal framework may give advice, (b) analyse whether
there are any specific IT-related rules etc. applicable and (c) by way of
analogy pinpoint and clarify areas of legal uncertainty and possible ways
of reducing it. This working method has in recent decades become a major task
within the field of information technology law and is also the basis for the
following presentation of XML in an IPR perspective.
Major IPR objects
An IPR inventory
The overall purpose of the inventory
presented here of how different XML-related intellectual assets may fit into
the system of intellectual property rights is to provide a basis for further
discussions. In practice there are namely many factors influencing an assessment
of whether a particular “work” is to be regarded as “protected
material” or not. Differences in national jurisdictions, not least,
make it necessary to emphasise the need for a supplementary legal analysis
based on all factual circumstances in a certain case. The possibility of,
and in fact common need for, specific IPR contract clauses adds to the picture.
In this context mention should also be made of the possibility of taking advantage
of technical measures as such in copyright protection.
The following discussion will focus on DTDs and schemas, markup in terms
of elements and attributes, a marked up document, stylesheets etc., (hypertext)
links and portals, and to some extent, databases (briefly). Central issues
to be reflected upon are: the major form of intellectual property right, category
of work, protected material (including the requirement of originality), forms
of representation (graphical, digital, printed etc.), and finally possible
infringements. It should once again be stressed that the given information
is to be regarded merely as introductory remarks as to the possible legal
status of various XML features.
One particularly important distinction is that between copyright protected
computer programs and other literary works. This is because computer programs
are surrounded by certain specific legal principles concerning backup copies,
observation, functionality test, de-compilation, reverse engineering etc.10 This remark indicates that the general starting point is that computer
programs are copyright protected provided that the code (or other accepted
forms of its expression) complies with the requirements of originality.11
There exists no universal legal definition of the term computer program,
which may be taken as a sign of a general aim, given the rapidity of technical
development, to avoid technically rigid regulations. An attempt to define
the concept of computer programs was made, however, by the World Intellectual
Property Organisation (WIPO) in the late 70’s, describing a computer
program as
a set of instructions capable, when incorporated in a machine-readable
medium, of causing a machine having information-processing capabilities, to
indicate, perform or achieve a particular function, task or result.
It is interesting to note that the (relatively) recently adopted EC
Software Directive offers protection of computer programs in any expression
and form without more precisely defining this object of protection. The protection
includes source code, object code and the expression of the program in any
other human readable language or machine readable form (Article 8 (2)).
Furthermore, the Software Directive encompasses the protection of so-called “preparatory
design material”, which is to be understood as flow charts representing
the underlying logic of the program, or a description in words or otherwise
of the design of the program. This is to say, preparatory design material
is protected as computer programs.
DTDs and schemas
A Document Type Definition may be described as “the formal
definition of the elements, entities and notions which go to make up a specific
document type in SGML“12 (or XML). The major form of intellectual property right in a discussion
about DTDs is copyright. Mainly because
of a DTD’s character of a specification
which cannot be executed (directly) by a computer, it is not likely to qualify
as a computer program. Instead, it appears to be more reasonable to regard
a DTD as a vocabulary of rules that may be computerised.13 Furthermore, a DTD has a declarative character – not procedural
– with an infinite number of documents that will meet its requirements.
But what about the validation of a DTD
in order to find out whether it conforms to the given syntax? Could this be
considered as similar to the compilation of a computer program? Hardly.
To summarise, the lack of executable algorithms in combination with
the need for computer support, i.e. underlying software engine, for validation
of the DTD itself and its correlation to marked up documents etc. probably
disqualify a DTD from the IPR work category of computer programs.
One should bear in mind, though, that the legal definition of what is
to be regarded as a computer program does not necessarily correspond to a
common technical understanding. In this context mention should be made, for
instance, of the fact that the declarative parts of COBOL-program will in
an IPR perspective qualify as computer programs. This implies that it cannot
be taken for granted that a court, somewhere in the world, will in fact look
upon a DTD as program code.
The view put forward in this paper, however, is that DTDs – in
spite of their somewhat hybrid features – have a predominant character
of specification and not of computer program. Finally, DTDs are not programmed
but specified.
The introduction of so-called schemas does not change this view in principle,
but it does weaken the argument. A schema can be generally described14 as a specification or formal definition of the constraints on the
content of an XML document, aiming at both structure and functionality. One
way to specify a schema is to use a DTD (this may be referred to as an SGML
data schema), but XML schemas can model other kinds of structured data as
well and are in principle more expressive. An important feature of an XML
schema is the possibility to integrate database functionality and communication
between applications. A major purpose of an XML schema is indeed to make it
support data typing (integer, date etc.) and thereby facilitate XML data interchange
with conventional database systems.15 XML schemas are written in XML and have been developed for use on
the Internet and are therefore co-ordinated with other W3C specifications.
This rudimentary description of schemas highlights how much more powerful
and functionally oriented an XML schema is compared with a DTD, but we are
still dealing with a specification and not an executable code. However, this
reasoning is not similar to saying that a DTD or schema may not be copyright
protected. On the contrary, DTDs commonly represent economic investments and
valuable intellectual assets of an enterprise or organisation. From a philosophical
point of view this may appear somewhat contradictory, considering that one
of the underlying goals of the development of SGML – and XML for that
matter – has been to provide means for platform independent interchange
of documents through networks.
The general copyright requirement of originality naturally applies also
to a DTD or schema that seeks protection. An original combination of logical
connectors16 and occurrence indicators plays an important role here.
The form in which the DTD or schema is represented makes no difference
to the possibility of copyright protection. This means that a graphical version,
a representation in conventional text format or a digital copy are equally
protected.
Markup
Markup in terms of a customised set of tags comprising both elements
and attributes may no doubt represent an important intellectual resource to
an enterprise or organisation. This applies to both commercial providers of
general solutions to document management problems and in situations where
a specific tagset has evolved during the procedure of system development.
In this context the intellectual asset represented by the markup may be protected
by copyright.
Provided that the markup at hand meets the requirement of originality,
protection can be expected as a literary work. Similar to the previous discussion
about DTDs a key issue is whether it would be possible to argue that markup
should fall in to the IPR categories of either “computer program”
or “preparatory design material”. The answer – based on
current legal discussions about the status of HTML-code – is no.17 This conclusion is based mainly on the following.
In spite of the fact the markup code does give instructions –
to a web browser, for instance – there is no compilation or interpretation
similar to what is a function commonly associated with the running of a conventional
computer program. The fact that the markup may not be directly executed by
a computer is, however, not a formal reason for excluding the code from protection
as a computer program, because there are software modules which, in spite
of not being executable, are considered to fall into this IPR category.18 Still, in a discussion of the general characteristic of markup,
the question of the code being executable or not is relevant.
Furthermore, the lack of conditional stipulations in markup places it
more naturally as another form of literary work than computer programs which
commonly are procedural.19 Yet another aspect has to do with the fact that the specific legal
framework surrounding computer programs does not easily apply to markup.20 For instance, how does one decompile element tags?
The reasoning above does not exclude markup from being an intellectual
asset that may be protected, but what kind of tags may be regarded as protected
material? The assessment of originality will naturally be affected by the
chosen characteristic of the markup. For instance, a tagset based merely on
structural elements such as “Preface, Introduction, Chapters, References
etc.” is less likely to reach the level of originality than a tagset
mirroring more specific features of a particular application. An example from
the legal domain may illustrate when the markup ought to quality for copyright
protection. An extraction of the tagset developed in the so called Corpus
Legis Project (graphically illustrated in Microstars DTD editor Near &
Far) is presented below.21 The sample of tags is used for topic oriented contents markup of
legal statutes. The list of elements illustrates nine different legal elements.22
Figure 1
. Topic oriented contents markup of legal
statutes
The markup level (e.g. layout, structure and contents) as such does
not determine the outcome of an originality assessment. It may very well be
the case that a presentation oriented markup meets the requirements while,
as indicated above, structural markup will not. Contents markup, on the other
hand, is in general more likely to be regarded as an author’s own intellectual
creation.
In order to qualify for copyright protection there are no special requirements
as regards forms of representation. This means that a graphical representation
of a tagset (see
Figure 1 above) as well as elements
inserted in a marked up document can be protected.
Marked up document
On the basis of the discussion above concerning markup as an object
of IPR, the broader notion of a marked-up document does not give rise to any
principally new legal issues. This means that a marked up document may be
subject to copyright as a kind of literary work, but it does not fall into
the category of a computer program (including so-called preparatory design
material).
There appear to be even weaker arguments than the markup code itself
in favour of regarding the marked-up document as a computer program. Comparison
may here be made to the distinction between a word processing program which
is, of course, categorised as a computer program also in the sense of IPR,
and the word processing document which does not fall into this category of
work.23
The question of originality as a requirement for protection does not
differ from any other similar assessment. One could possibly say that the
insertion of customised markup may add to the originality of a certain document
(text unit etc.). From a practical point of view it may therefore be relevant
to present a printout version of a document trying to attain copyright with
tags shown instead of tags hidden. For instance, one could not within the
Swedish jurisdiction claim copyright to a law, but a marked-up version of
the law may be subject to this protection. Furthermore, the supplementation
of metadata to a document is another way of making it more original from the
point of view of copyright.
<SUBDIV1 ID="Provisions"><S1TITLE>Introductory provisions</S1TITLE>
<ARTICLE ID="A1"><ARTNO>Section 1</ARTNO>
<PARA>For the purposes of this Act</PARA>
<PARA><LEGALDEF ID="personal-data">personal data<CR>
means any information relating to an individual;
(see <CLINK LINKEND="nm-de-personal-data">german</CLINK> law)</LEGALDEF></PARA>
<PARA><LEGALDEF ID="personal-data-file">personal data file<CR>
means any file, list or other record undergoing automatic data
processing that contains information relating to a <ANCHOR IDREF="data-subject"
REFTYPE="internal">data subject</ANCHOR>; (see
<CLINK LINKEND="nm-de-personal-data-file">german</CLINK> law)</LEGALDEF></PARA>
Figure 2
. Sample of marked up version of a law
Stylesheets, etc
The basic idea of a stylesheet can be described as a means of formatting
instructions stored separately from the target text. A major advantage is,
of course, that the same content of a document may be presented in various
ways, depending on the choice of producer, user etc. In this respect XSL incorporates new functions
that contribute to the already existing family of styling languages.24
In comparison with a DTD, stylesheets developed in XSL have more in
common with the conventional features of a computer program. The application
of a stylesheet is far more deterministic and leads to the same result independently
of used software tool.
XSL is based on a method for so-called pattern matching which ranges
from fairly simple matching of names of an element type that will be given
a certain style to context-based considerations where Boolean operators (AND/OR)
may narrow or broaden the matching criteria. Bradley describes this form of
pattern matching in the following way:
At the heart of the XSL format is the capability to identify elements
in the source documents which require specific formatting rules to be applied.
This is termed ‘pattern matching’. Its capabilities in this area
range from very simple (apply these formats to every element with the name
‘Para’) to the very complex (apply these format to every ‘Para’
element that appears within a ‘Section’ element immediately follows
a ‘Figure’ element, and has an attribute of ‘type’
with a value of ‘continuation’).25
The procedural character of an XSL-stylesheet described above is further
strengthened by transformation mechanisms of this styling language that take
place prior to actually styling the content of a document. This may be done
by adding prefixes and suffices to elements.26 There are several other aspects of XSL that support the idea that
this kind of advanced stylesheets may be copyright protected as computer programs;
given that they meet the requirement of originality of course.
Before moving on in this inventory of XML-related IPR objects, let us
raise a very practical question. Would it be regarded as fair use of a copyright
protected stylesheet to copy a part of it, acknowledge the source and claim
that it has merely been “cited”? The answer is, “not necessarily”,
considering that it is, for instance, not permissible to extract the best
part of a work in order to improve one’s own. Another decisive factor
is whether the copied part of the stylesheet – or for that matter, DTD,
computer program, etc. – corresponds to what is to be regarded as a
substantial part of a work. The setting of reproduction is also relevant.
Partial reproduction for scientific purposes, for example, is more widely
accepted than what is allowed in a commercial environment.27
Hypertext links and portals
One of the most intensively debated IPR issues related to the Internet
concerns hypertext links. Just as with IT law in general, certain lines of
arguments appear to be more distinct and valid than others. Caution is prescribed,
however, as to how different courts governed by various jurisdictions will
decide in an individual case.
Given these conditions, one could say that there is no general legal
requirement to obtain permission before including a link to someone else’s
homepage. Such a link will probably be regarded as a reference to someone
else’s work, which is permissible. Furthermore. the hypertext link itself
does not represent any expression that may be subject to copyright, as it
merely contains an address to a site on the Web. In this context mention should
be made of the fact that an author of a homepage or a site does have the possibility
of protecting the contents of the web pages by passwords and user ID:s.28 However, not all kinds of hypertext links are innocent in an IPR
perspective. The use of so-called embedded links may, for example, result
in copyright infringement.
Furthermore, a Web site presenting a collection of links to other sites,
indexes of how to search information on the Internet etc. may be protected,
in which case the coping and integration of those links into another Web site
will be forbidden.
It may not be the case that the structure of the portals so common today
qualifies for protection as a database, literary work, but the legal framework
of IPR includes so-called neighbouring rights that are generally considered
to be weaker but do offer possibilities of protection and remuneration.
To summarise, the advanced and comparatively much more powerful possibilities
of implementing links by means of XLL, for instance, the method of pointing
at several sources simultaneously, implies a need for legal awareness. In
particular this applies to the function of prescribing by way of a link certain
courses of action. More precisely, how to present the result of the link (in
a new browser window, embedded in the current page or as a replacement of
the current page) and when to effectuate the link (on a user’s request
or automatically).29
Databases
Databases may be subject to copyright protection. Considering that the
introduction of XML does not give rise to any specific IPR-issues in this
respect, only a few remarks will be made on this area.
The starting point is that the notion of a database is vague from both
a legal and a technical point of view. Article 1 (2) of the Database Directive
(EC 96/9) defines a database as
a collection of independent works, data or other material arranged
in a systematic or methodical way and individually accessible by electronic
or other means.
A somewhat extended definition is given in the Directive’s Preamble
recital 17:
Whereas the term ‘database’ should be understood to include
literary, artistic, musical or other collections of works or collections of
other material such as texts, sound, images, numbers, facts, and data; whereas
it should cover collections of independent works, data or other material which
are systematically or methodically arranged and can be individually accessed;
whereas the means that a recording or an audio-visual, cinematographic, literary
or musical work as such does not fall within the scope of this Directive.
Important requirements for the constitution of a database in this legal
sense are the existence of:
- a collection of
- independent works, e.g. texts and computer programs, or
- data or other materials
- arranged in a systematic way.30
The contents of a database may be subject to protection under at least
the following conditions:
- the contained independent works
- the collection of the independent works, and
- the systematically arranged data or other materials.31
This means that databases represent a work category of its own. The
definition comprises databases available on-line via the Internet through
a homepage as well as via an FTP server. Databases delivered on, for instance,
a CD-ROM are also protected by this EC Directive.
In this context a distinction should be made between computer programs
– commonly search programs – that are used for retrieving or extracting
information from the database and the database itself. Copyright protection
may be offered to both work categories, but under different legal regulations.
The form of protection is similar, however, because a database needs to qualify
as original when its contents “constitute by reason of their selection
or arrangement, the intellectual creation of the author” (Article 2(3),
the Database Directive). In this context the use of XML may add to the originality
by providing means for customised arrangement of data and facts in a systematic
way.
Already protected works stored in a database will continue to benefit
from the perhaps more extensive rights end remedies offered under other copyright
rules. The advantage of the Database Directive is that it offers a so called
sui generis protection in respect to contents that otherwise would not have
been protected.
The exclusive rights in relation to the protection of a database are
stated in Article 5 of the Database Directive comprising the following:
(a) temporary or permanent reproduction by any means and in any form,
in whole or part;
(b) translation, adaption, arrangement and any other alteration;
(c) any form of distribution to the public of the database or of copies
thereof;
(d) any communication, display or performance to the public;
(e) any reproduction, distribution, communication, display or performance
to the public of the results or the acts refer to in (b).
Concluding remarks
Generally speaking, the reason why management needs to bother with intellectual
property rights is not merely out of a desire to protect an organisation’s
own intellectual assets but also in order to acquire knowledge concerning
prohibited and permitted actions in respect to competitors on the market.
In practice, it may be interesting to know that a work being copyright protected
does not completely remove it from public use. Intellectual property rights
do not, for instance, impede anyone reading a DTD from being inspired by the
underlying ideas, as copyright only concerns the expression of thought.
If we are dealing with computer programs, a set of more specific rules
apply, and so it is important to consider this work category in the context
of schemas, stylesheets, etc. A major exclusive right of the copyright owner
concerns reproduction, for which reason a program may not be copied –
even for private use – without a licence or permission. Under EC law
(Articles 5 and 6 of the Software Directive) an authorised user may, however,
observe and study a program, make a copy or adapt it for the purpose of error
correction. Furthermore, back-up copies are allowed and under certain circumstances
so is decompilation (and reverse engineering). Algorithms, being a typical
way of representing ideas, are not protected.
To conclude, the discourse of this paper illustrates how the conventional
categorisation of copyright works is being somewhat outpaced by technical
development. In spite of the fact that the legal framework of intellectual
property rights has been IT-adjusted, in that it explicitly includes computer
programs and databases, there are fields of uncertainty. The introduction
of XML schemas and XSL stylesheets provides two examples of possible ways
of representing intellectual assets that from a legal point of view may be
regarded as hybrid works. A management solution to this legal uncertainty
would be (a) recognition of the general requirements of copyright protection
(originality etc.), (b) contractual regulation and (c) the implementation
of technical means of IPR protection.
Finally, this subject matter clearly shows the double faced interaction
of IT and law. On the one hand there is a need to investigate IT-related substantive
law issues. At the same time one should not disregard the fact that IT may
offer vital support for the handling of a wide variety of legal issues, including
the management of intellectual property rights.
Bibliography