To Steal a Book Is an Elegant Offense

Intellectual Property Law in Chinese Civilization

William P. Alford

• Publisher: Stanford University Press
• Year: 1995
• Print ISBN: 9780804729604, 9780804722704
• eBook ISBN: 9780804779296
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Law
• Subtopic: Intellectual Property Law
• Index: Law

This study examines the law of intellectual property in China from imperial times to the present. It draws on history, politics, economics, sociology, and the arts, and on interviews with officials, business people, lawyers, and perpetrators and victims of 'piracy'. The author asks why the Chinese, with their early bounty of scientific and artistic creations, are only now devising legal protection for such endeavors and why such protection is more rhetoric than reality on the Chinese mainland. In the process, he sheds light on the complex relation between law and political culture in China. The book goes on to examine recent efforts in the People's Republic of China to develop intellectual property law, and uses this example to highlight the broader problems with China's program of law reform.

Table of contents

• Studies in East Asian Law, - Harvard University
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Dedication
• Acknowledgments
• Table of Contents
• One - Introduction
• Two - Don’t Stop Thinking About ... Yesterday: Why There Was No Indigenous Counterpart to Intellectual Property Law in Imperial China
• Three - Learning the Law at Gunpoint: The Turn-of-the-Century Introduction of Western Notions of Intellectual Property
• Four - Squaring Circles: Intellectual Property Law with Chinese Characteristics for a Socialist Commodity Economy
• Five - As Pirates Become Proprietors: Changing Attitudes Toward Intellectual Property on Taiwan
• Six - No Mickey Mouse Matter: U.S. Policy on Intellectual Property in Chinese Society
• Notes
• Bibliography
• Glossary
• Index