As with the first edition of this book, this edition attempts to provide a detailed and scholarly insight into Australian intellectual property law. Its primary emphasis is on the legal principles and the complexities in that law. The authors have made a deliberate decision to focus on these issues to the exclusion of the wider policy issues surrounding intellectual property law. They have done so for a number of reasons. The first of these is that space constraints make it impractical to adequately deal with those policy considerations in a meaningful way. Consequently, they are flagged throughout the book and detailed references made to the many excellent works that already discuss those matters. The second and related reason is that an adequate investigation into and examination of the legal principles and complexities of Australian intellectual property law requires the sort of detailed treatment that has been undertaken and, again, space constraints demanded a choice about which issues to focus on. The intention is, therefore, to provide an in-depth and scholarly analysis of intellectual property law. By so doing, we aim to increase the stock of knowledge in this important area of the law.

It is no surprise that in the time that has elapsed since the first edition, the law has continued to not only expand but develop in unexpected ways. The consequence is the need for a new edition which takes account of that expansion and development. In the area of copyright some of the recent changes include the introduction of the resale royalty right for visual artists in 2009, and the recent important decisions of the High Court in IceTV v Nine Network Australia (2009) and the Full Federal Court decisions of Roadshow Films v iiNet Limited (2011) and Telstra Corporation v Phone Directories Companies (2010). In trade mark law, the High Court has decided its first two cases under the 1995 legislation and in patents, key developments relate principally to reform proposals that appear in the recently released Exposure Draft for the Intellectual Property Laws Amendment (Raising the Bar) Bill 2011. These proposals result from various reviews including a series of consultation papers that IP Australia released in 2009. This new edition integrates these and many other developments into the structure and relevant content of the first edition.