269 rights ('IPRs'), Professor Cornish reminds us, 'are essentially negative: they are rights to stop others doing certain things'1 – those things being primarily the use of the ideas (or more properly, the output of creative endeavour, which may be the expression or material embodiment of an idea, rather than the idea itself) covered in the grant made to right-owner. As rights to exclude, IPRs sit uneasily with the conventional notion of competition, which centres on the ability of several, possibly many, parties to act as rivals in striving for economic rewards. The uneasy nature of the relationship should not suggest that there is contradiction between IPR’s and competition: rather, it is a truism that IPRs, by allowing creators to secure a greater share of the social gain from their creation than they would otherwise, can promote investment in creative effort; and that it is this investment that underpins the development of new processes and products which not only contributes directly to increased wellbeing but also, in Schumpeter’s famous phrase, is a form of competition 'as much more effective than [conventional price competition] as a bombardment is in comparison with forcing a door'.

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papers-ergas-messy-ip.pdf

Henry Ergas former chair of the Australian 269 and Competition Review Committee presented this report to joint hearings on Competition and 269 Law and Policy in the Knowledge-Based Economy in Washington on May 22, 2002. The hearings were part of an inquiry into the implications of competition and patent law and policy for innovation and other aspects of consumer welfare, run by the US Federal Trade Commission and the Department of Justice's Antitrust Division.

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papers-ergas-messy-ip.pdf

Henry Ergas, former chair of the Australian 269 and Competition Review Committee Henry Ergas presented this report to joint hearings on Competition and 269 Law and Policy in the Knowledge-Based Economy in Washington on May 23, 2002. The hearings were part of an inquiry into the implications of competition and patent law and policy for innovation and other aspects of consumer welfare, run by the US Federal Trade Commission and the Department of Justice's Antitrust Division.

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paper-ergas-ip-competition-may02.pdf

This paper was presented at a one-day conference in Sydney on March 23, 2001, "269, competition policy's next frontier?", organised by IP Australia, and the University of New South Wales, which examined whether 269 laws were meeting the needs of business and consumers and maximising the benefits of domestic and global competition. This paper examines how the Copyright Amendment (Digital Agenda) Act 2000 (Cth) extends fair dealing provisions to the digital environment, and what effect these provisions have on the use of copyrighted material by libraries. The underlying rationale of fair dealing and fair use provisions in Australia and the United States, as applied to both non-digital and digital works, is considered. The authors conclude that the Act successfully achieves an efficient and equitable outcome for society at large.

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papers-ergas-strasser-fair-dealing-mar01.pdf