This title contains discussions that explore the role of competition policy and intellectual property rights in promoting an efficient and innovative economy. This volume contains a collection of papers and commentaries stemming from a March 2005 symposium, which was organized in co-operation by the Competition Bureau, the Canadian Intellectual Property Office, and the Micro-economic Policy Analysis and Marketplace Framework Policy branches of Industry Canada. Given developments such as the prevalence of authorized generic pharmaceuticals, the apparent extension of intellectual property rights, and rapid advancements in communications technology such as digitization, many concerns have emerged about if the customary methods of licensing IP rights remain the most efficient mechanisms for disseminating IP and encouraging its creation.The papers and commentaries contained in this book reflect an intensive evaluation of these concerns and endeavour to find the right balance between creating incentives for innovation and the encouragement of vigorous competition in the marketplace.

David Vaver, MA (Oxon.), BA, LLB (Auck.), JD (Chicago), was appointed Professor of Intellectual Property Law at Osgoode Hall Law School of York University, Toronto, in 2009 and is a board member of IP Osgoode. He is the Emeritus Reuters Professor of Intellectual Property and Information Technology Law in the University of Oxford, an emeritus fellow of St. Peter’s College, and the former director of the Oxford Intellectual Property Research Centre. He has researched and taught intellectual property law for forty years, previously at Osgoode, the University of British Columbia, and the University of Auckland. Professor Vaver founded the Intellectual Property Journal which he currently also edits, and is associated with the Chambers of Michael Silverleaf QC, 11 South Square, Gray’s Inn, London. Professor Vaver has written extensively on national and intellectual property law and policy, and his work is frequently cited by courts and legal writers. He
was the author of the first edition of this work and of Copyright Law (2000), both in Irwin Law’s Essentials of Canadian Law Series, a coeditor (with Marcel Boyer & Michael Trebilcock) of Competition Policy and Intellectual Property (Irwin Law, 2009), and editor of a five-volume collection of writings, Intellectual Property Rights: Critical Concepts in Law (Routledge, 2006). To mark his retirement from the University of Oxford, Professor Vaver was presented in 2010 with a Festschrift edited by Catherine Ng, Lionel Bently, and Giuseppina D’Agostino, The Common Law of Intellectual Property: Essays in Honour of Professor David Vaver (Hart Publishing, 2010).

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Marcel Boyer is Bell Canada Professor of Industrial Economics at the Université de Montréal and Vice-President and Chief Economist at the Montreal Economic Institute. He is presently fellow of the C.D. Howe Institute, CIRANO, CIREQ, and the World Academy of Productivity Science, Academic Affiliate of The Analysis Group, member of the executive board of the Canadian Law and Economics Association, member of the board of the Agency for Public-Private Partnerships of Québec, member of the Industry Canada advisory committee on business strategies and innovation, member of the governance committee of the “Sustainable Development and Socially Responsible Investment Chair” (École polytechnique de Paris and Université de Toulouse). Professor Boyer currently conducts research in the areas of investment valuation (risk, flexibility, and real options); efficient organizations, innovation, and competition (competitive social democracy); incentives, incomplete information and uncertainty; and law and economics (environmental issues, copyrights, IPR). Professor Boyer has acted as expert economist on behalf of several national and international corporations and government organizations.

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Michael Trebilcock is University Professor and Professor of Law and Economics at the University of Toronto. In 1999, Professor Trebilcock received an Honorary Doctorate in Laws from McGill University and was awarded the Canada Council Molson Prize in the Humanities and Social Sciences. In the same year he was elected an Honorary Foreign Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. In 2003, he received an Honorary Doctorate in Law from the Law Society of Upper Canada and in 2007 he was the recipient of the Ontario Attorney General’s Mundell Medal for contributions to Law and Letters.

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