In 2019, a fierce debate erupted over the future of patent law.1 The most heavily contested issue was the fate of the judicial exceptions to patentability, rules created by federal courts that describe which types of inventions are ineligible for patent protection.2 The exceptions include abstract ideas, laws of nature, and natural phenomena.3 Throughout the twentieth century, the Supreme Court declared that these categories of discovery should be “free to all men and reserved to none” because they are the “basic tools of scientific and technological work.”4

Legal and other scholars offer and regularly debate a variety of theories of justification for intellectual property protection.2 After all, the intellectual property law helps to determine what kinds of intellectual property people produce and who has access to the products of intellectual property endeavors, including the knowledge and information contained in books and even the life-saving benefits of drugs and medicines.3 While lawmakers can weigh and balance competing societal needs and interests and then promulgate specific laws to achieve particular social objectives, it falls to judges to construe and implement those rules. In doing so, the judges, aided by legal scholarship, identify and articulate the principles, policies, and purposes that, together with the rules themselves, both statutory and common law, supply the bases and justifications for their interpretation and application of the law. Much the same as other legal regimes, and at times even more so given the nature of at least some types of works addressed by IP law, IP law must be shaped to accommodate technological advances and changing social conditions.

This chapter first demonstrates the significance of counterterrorism for China and international society and then reviews different narratives of China’s counterterrorism. It investigates China’s domestic and international counterterrorism lawmaking at the domestic and international levels. After the late 1990s, and especially after the September 11 terrorist attacks in 2001, the UN Security Council emerged at the forefront of international counterterrorism and adopted a lot of resolutions that imposed demanding obligations on UN members.The chapter examines how these UN counterterrorism resolutions are enforced in China. While many countries’ counterterrorism activities have been strongly criticized, China has encountered particularly strong criticism, and especially for its operations in Xinjiang. Finally, this chapter tries to recalibrate the relationship between counterterrorism and human rights protection, and to evaluate the implications of counterterrorism measures for human rights in China.

Observing China’s use of force, its voting behaviours and argumentation in the UN Security Council (UNSC) and its official statements on other relevant occasions allows summing up the Chinese approach to jus ad bellum in the following aspects: a narrow meaning of the term ‘force’, a positivist interpretation of the threshold, time and target requirements of exercising the right of self-defence, a negative attitude towards humanitarian intervention and a strict reading of the responsibility to protect. These positivist tools have led China to consistently endorse a ‘restrictivist’ understanding of the UN Charter that prohibits any use of military force by one state against another absent authorization from the UNSC or a situation involving self-defence. In this sense, China would likely maintain its ‘wait and see’ approach regarding jus ad bellum in cyberspace. However, faced with the anonymity of cyberspace and the increasing frequency of cyber-attacks, the possibility that China will adopt a more flexible understanding of certain rules cannot be ruled out.

Race poses complex and challenging problems within intellectual property (IP) ecosystems. Just as racial perspectives, attitudes, and beliefs have played an important role in shaping many aspects of Euroamerican society and culture as a whole, they similarly have significantly affected the shape of Western IP law and the implementation of it in the broader IP ecosystem.

In 1790, the same year that Congress passed the first federal copyright law, Mercy Otis Warren registered her book Poems, Dramatic & Miscellaneous for copyright protection, becoming likely the first woman to do so in the United States.1 She bequeathed the copyright in the book to her son Winslow, making clear its value to her and noting it was “the only thing I can properly call my own.”2 For Mercy Otis Warren, the copyright was not simply an economic incentive; it was her own small piece of independence – property that was her own in an era where a married woman would otherwise own nothing.

The music industries in the United Kingdom (U.K.) have seen several damning reports in the last few years. The 2019 report “Counting the Music Industry: The Gender Gap” paints a bleak picture,1 where most signed artists by major (traditional) record labels and music publishers in the U.K. are male. U.K. music publishers have in the reported period signed 12,040 writers, out of which only 14.18 percent are women. In similar vein, female musicians make up only 19.69 percent of the rosters of the acts signed to music labels. This severe underrepresentation of women is also reflected in the statistics of music played on U.K. radio, where a 2020 report finds that women are often (if not always) left out, with some radio stations not playing female artists at all.

Copyright is the legal regime intended to promote and regulate expressive intellectual endeavor.1 As such, copyright is concerned with the intellectual activity which epitomizes the purpose of intellectual property protection: the achievement of human actualization.2

This chapter explores the relationship between international law and the Chinese Constitution, which reflects the country’s self-positioning in the international legal order and its reception of international law in the local context. It first covers (i) the adaptation of international law in the domestic context and (ii) China’s engagement and increasing influence in the international arena. The Constitution provides a normative context to understand how international law is interpreted and applied in China. It concerns the perception of the PRC’s party regime on the content and the effect of international law and how they may be selectively adapted and interpreted in the local context to serve theprimary goals. From a normative perspective, this chapter analyzes the evolution of the Chinese Constitution from that of a revolutionary state to that of an emerging global power, with a focus on the current 1982 Constitution and its amendments in the post-Mao era in light of the notion of selective adaptation. A global power’s constitution, as featured in the 2018 amendment, suggests an effort of the PRC to pursue normative consensus with the international community.

This chapter explores trademark law and issues of moral and social justice that arise in its implementation. By promoting similar treatment of similar branding efforts and removing unnecessary barriers, the intellectual property (IP) system could promote interpersonal justice in several areas of life. The sports and entertainment sector, retail, restaurants, and consumer goods markets are highly dependent on brands, trademarks, and goodwill.

This chapter provides a brief overview of China’s engagement with international humanitarian law (IHL) since the late nineteenth century. It first looks back to the late Qing dynasty and follows it through to the early decades of the People’s Republic of China. It then examines China’s contemporary IHL practices, including China’s participation in IHL treaties, its domestic legislations, its approach to IHL training and education, as well as its participation in international rule-making processes. The chapter then focusses on developments of new technologies that have called into question the applicability, relevance and sufficiency of IHL. As IHL is in the process of being adapted, (re)interpreted and expanded, China is seeking to play a more active role in these processes. The chapter concludes with a reflection on China’s changing role and perspectives of its future engagements with IHL.

This chapter first gives an overview of the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI), including its background and content. It then examines how major Western powers are responding to the BRI by proposing alternatives, thus illustrating its geopolitical and geo-economic implications. Following this, it deconstructs the legal framework of the BRI and explains the approach with which China is putting the BRI into practice. Finally, it explores what the BRI may bring about in the international legal order and the Chinese legal order. Through the prism of the BRI, this chapter will help appreciation of how China, as it becomes a leading state, exerts influence on the international order, which is experiencing a tremendous transformation.