A. Introduction
Legal and governmental infrastructures can greatly affect the form and function of intellectual property management organizations. Because all the organizations reviewed as background for this report function within the same sociopolitical system, distinctions born of different legal and government systems are not apparent.
In comparison with intellectual property management in other countries, the U.S. system is unique in imposing few legislative structures on organizations that collectively administer intellectual property. Most other Western nations have enacted some degree of legislative governance or oversight on intellectual property service providers operating in their countries. The following section, by Rina Elster Pantalony of the Canadian Heritage Information Network, describes how the legislative context in Canada affects one particular type of intellectual property management organization: the collective. By highlighting distinctions in Canadian legislation, tradition, and legal systems, Ms. Pantalony provides an example of how a country’s legal and political landscape affects the form of collective management that evolves within that country.
Canada offers a particularly interesting counterpoint to intellectual property management in the United States. Canadian intellectual property collectives are authorized by federal legislative statutes, and fall under the jurisdiction of tribunals whose influence may affect certification, rate setting, and dispute resolution. As in the United States, Canadian collectives tend to form by genre (e.g., music, art, writing) or by type of right (e.g., public performing rights, reprographic rights). However, Canadian collectives are also influenced by language of publication, resulting in organizations that represent French-language works in Quebec and English-language works in English-speaking Canada.
Despite the increasing globalization of markets, properties, and interactions, the Canadian context outlined in this chapter vividly underscores how intellectual property management organizations are subject to the local influence of culture, place, and sociopolitical circumstances. Even the challenges imposed by digital networks, which affect all organizations regardless of origin, are being addressed within the context of the laws and traditions of individual nations. Until international harmonization of intellectual property law is achieved (a prospect not likely to occur any time soon), intellectual property management organizations will continue to be influenced and defined, in part, by the nations in which they reside.