© The Author (2008). Published by Oxford University Press. All rights reserved
Editorial |
The great unread
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It has sometimes been said of IP rights that one of their prime roles is to affect the flow of information. Thus the laws of trade secrecy and confidentiality guard against the unauthorized disclosure or exploitation of something—a fact, an idea, a technique, or an aspiration—that has not been committed into the hands of the world at large. Patent laws work in the opposite direction, to force the disclosure of detailed