Author: Simone Benvenuti, Fiona Elizabeth Macmillan, Sirio Zolea – 31/10/2024
The digital era has revolutionized the realm of intellectual property, bringing both unprecedented opportunities and significant challenges. “Intellectual Property in the Digital Era” delves into the intricacies of this transformation, exploring the impact of digital technologies on intellectual property (IP) law and practice. The book covers a wide range of topics, including the protection of digital content, the enforcement of IP rights online, and the role of emerging technologies like artificial intelligence and blockchain in IP management. Through a blend of theoretical analysis and practical case studies, this book provides a thorough understanding of how digitalization is influencing intellectual property, offering valuable insights for legal professionals, academics, and policymakers.
“Intellectual Property in the Digital Age” offers a comprehensive examination of the evolving landscape of IP in the context of digital technologies. This book provides an analysis of how digital advancements, such as the internet, social media, and blockchain, are reshaping the way intellectual property is created, protected, and enforced. It explores the challenges and opportunities these changes present for creators, businesses, and policymakers.
This book is one of the outcomes of two years of academic collaboration between the University of Roma Tre and Tashkent State University of Law (TSUL). It is part of a dialogue between the two institutions, which aims to broaden cooperation and collaboration between academic institutions in Italy and Uzbekistan. In particular, it is our hope that it will form part of broad programme of educational, cultural and economic exchanges between our two countries.
The first memorandum of understanding between Roma Tre and TSUL was signed in September 2022. Subsequently, scholars from each institution have participated in joint conferences on topics such as predictive justice, the law of the outer space, and the digitalization of legal studies. The mobility agreement between the two institutions ensures that exchanges are not, however, limited to members of academic staff. There is a regular exchange of students between Rome and Tashkent and current negotiations between the two universities are paving the way for the establishment of a joint double degree.
The list of collaborative activities between our two institutions is too long to be included in full. However, the following important highlights give some flavour of our joint activities. In the last couple of years, three professors and two members of TSUL administrative staff visited Roma Tre, taking part in lectures and other activities. Professor and current acting TSUL vice-rector Islambek Rustambekov also attended a scholarly meeting organized by Roma Tre on “European Lawyers and Innovative Teaching Rome” in January 2023. In turn, professors from Roma Tre have made academic visits to TSUL. Professor Giacomo Rojas Elgueta attended a Conference on “Development of Private International Law in Uzbekistan” in November 2022. Professor and current pro-Rector for internationalization Giorgio Resta took part in the Third International Legal Forum “Tashkent Law Spring” organized by the Uzbek Ministry of Justice in May 2023. Professor Sirio Zolea took part in the Conference on “Legal Tech, Education and Digital Transformation of Law” in February 2023. Events jointly organized by Roma Tre and TSUL have included the following: a seminar on “Digitalisation of Justice and Predictive Justice” organized at Roma Tre Law Department in May 2023; the meeting “A Bridge Between Italy and Uzbekistan. Academic Collaboration in the Age of Reforms”, with the participation of the Ambassador of Uzbekistan in Italy Abat Fayzullaev; and a Summer School on “Cyber Law. Exploring the Legal Landscape of Cyberspace” organized at TSUL in June 2024. With respect to student mobility, the first four TSUL students joined the Department of Law of University Roma Tre in the second semester of academic year 2023-2024, while ten are expected to come for the first semester of academic year 2024-2025. Generous EU funding within the framework of Erasmus KA171 program, which Roma Tre gained thanks to the essential contribution of TSUL International Department, will support and facilitate these exchanges.
The regulation of cyberspace, which was the focus of the first joint Roma Tre/TSUL Summer School, is a particular strategic interest underpinning the cooperation between the two universities. Scholars from Roma Tre Law School have developed an important profile in this area. For some years they have worked at a comparative level on the complex issues raised by data privacy, data governance, and artificial intelligence, in the context of the European and international regulatory frameworks. Intellectual property law, which has also been a focus of European and international regulatory attention, is also a critical part of the regulation of cyberspace. Overall, the constant expansion of intellectual property rights at national, regional and global levels raises questions about the coherence of legal regulation in relation to new technologies. In particular, intellectual property rights appear to be in structural tension with multi-level regulatory approaches to data sharing and socialization of data governance. A focus on intellectual property issues is, therefore, an important part of our joint research focusing on the need to improve legal coherence and balance the relationship between legal rights in the information economy.
As Uzbekistan and the other countries of Central Asia enter the global economy, there is an increasing interest in intellectual property law, and its transnational impact. Intellectual property rights are regarded as forming part of the process of transition from a socialist legal model to a system of law that supports the integration of local economies into the global market and is capable of regulating the domestic information and data economy. Eurasian experiences of regional integration, such as the Shanghai Cooperation Organization, also enhance comparative legal responses to the technical and political challenges of the global information and data economy. The collaboration that underpins this book is not only aimed at supporting the teaching of intellectual property law to undergraduates, it is also an attempt to describe and assess – in a style accessible to law students in the developing world – the particular challenges in the transnational regulation of intellectual property. It sheds light on the way in which intellectual property rights, as a global phenomenon, influence local and regional legal cultures, producing a multidirectional hybridization of legal models.
This book is published by Roma Tre Press for the series “Concorrenza & Mercato”. It demonstrates the commitment of the Department of Law at the University Roma Tre to contribute to a dialogue that supports the challenges that the Uzbek higher education system and Tashkent State University of Law are facing in this phase of the modernization process. It finds its place in the context of the varied range of collaborative activities between the two institutions that aim to broaden the horizons of the next generation of lawyers in Europe and Central Asia.