The law of patent, trademark law, copyright law and the law relating to industrial designs are the statutory enactments forming part of intellectual property law which have a bearing on the transfer of technology. There is one more branch of intellectual property law which also has a bearing on the transfer of technology and that is the law relating to confidential information or law relating to confidentiality. This law is not a written law; it is judge made law, in the sense that it is developed through cases.

Since the beginning of the Reconciliation and Social Justice Project in 1996, AustLII has sought to contribute to the process of reconciliation through the provision of relevant legal and cultural information relating to indigenous people. Two important components of the project have been collecting material as well as making it as accessible as possible to as many people as possible. Another significant part of the Reconciliation and Social Justice Project has been connecting remote Aboriginal communities to the Internet and providing training to them in its use. The history and achievements of the project are set out here and some consideration is given to future directions for the various aspects of the project.

This article aims at providing librarians with an overview of the current copyright position within the UK. I will begin by examining the copyright regime set up by the UK Copyright, Designs and Patents Act of 1988. I will then assess the impact of several key EU Directives and implementing UK Statutory Instruments on the working of this regime, and in particular discuss the implications of the new rights for owners of digital material. Finally, I will analyze some current UK copyright “hot topics” which are of equal concern and significance to users in other jurisdictions, and suggest some possible solutions.

Since the early 1960's there has been a growing interest in Chinese law in this country, much of which has been focused upon Chinese law during the period since the founding of the People's Republic of China in 1949. This interest has been evidenced both by the introduction of courses in Chinese law into the teaching programs of many of our major universities and by the appearance of numerous scholarly studies of Communist Chinese law.

When I was asked to give this talk it occurred to me that it might be interesting to think aloud about some of the changes in constitutional law—and in writing about constitutional law—that have occurred since I came to Canada. I am a New Zealander by birth, but I was teaching at the Faculty of Law of Monash University in Melbourne, Australia, when I came to the Osgoode Hall Law School on a one-year visit in the summer of 1970. During that visiting year, the faculty decided to offer me a permanent appointment. This was done over the objection of one of my colleagues, R. J. Gray, who claimed that my lectures would require simultaneous translation, and that I would not meet the height requirements for Canadian citizenship. Anyway I was persuaded to stay (and three years later I became a Canadian citizen).

In January 1672, nearly twenty years after the Dutch East India Company had established an outpost at Africa's Cape of Good Hope, a case was adjudicated by the rudimentary local judicial body, the Council of Justice, the significance of which was evident even then. The facts were simple. Members of the indigenous population were accused of having robbed and assaulted European servants of the Company. The legal question before the Council, however, was an intricate one. Did it have jurisdiction over the accused and could it apply to them the same law as would have been applied if the roles of perpetrator and victim had been reversed? The prosecutor successfully urged an affirmative answer. Citingthe Roman Emperor Justinian's Corpus Iuris Civilis, he argued that: “Since the law of nature is implanted in all reasonable creatures, the Hottentots cannot be excluded therefrom. They are consequently subject to the law of nature and therefore also the law of nations …”

In this presentation I shall be making reference particularly to the islands of the Eastern Caribbean, which are the jurisdictions I visit on a regular basis. I shall exclude Belize, which in the bookselling world we consider to be the province of Central American dealers, and also Guyana, for which no-one, I am afraid, seems to want to take responsibility. It's a difficult place to reach, and there's little to buy when you finally get there.

The United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland consists of four countries: England, Northern Ireland, Scotland and Wales. Legislative competence for the UK resides in the Westminster Parliament, but there are three legal systems (England and Wales, Northern Ireland, and Scotland) with separate courts and legal professions. These legal systems have a unified final court of appeal in the House of Lords. The Isle of Man, and the two Channel Islands (Guernsey and Jersey) are not part of the UK, but possessions of the crown. Although their citizens are subject to the British Nationality Act 1981, the islands have their own legal systems. They are represented by the UK government for the purposes of international relations, but are not formal members of the European Union.

I am now going to transfer you rapidly from the global information service to a locally targeted and focused legal information service designed to meet the particular needs of a small jurisdiction like Northern Ireland.

SLS Legal Publications was established in 1980 as a unique and profoundly innovative experiment in Northern Ireland (N.I.). Its continued existence 20 years later is testament to the fact that it has not only become a success story but is now an integral part of the legal system in Northern Ireland. SLS Legal Publications is a legal publishing and training company based within the Queen's University of Belfast (QUB) and sponsored by the NICS, the Law Society of N.I. and the Bar Council of N.I. QUB's sponsorship takes the form of the provision of accommodation and accounting services. The purpose of SLS is to provide a legal information service in various ways to the Northern Ireland legal profession and the wider community and I will expand on those various ways later in this talk.

Book Publishing in the English speaking Caribbean is a relatively recent phenomenon. Prior to the 1960s there were sporadic attempts by individuals and even large firms like the Gleaner Company's Pioneer Press in Jamaica, but some semblance of sustained publishing activity did not come to the region until the post-independence period. In that first immediate post-independence period, the initiative to set up publishing operations came from British educational publishers who established either wholly-owned subsidiaries or went into partnerships with local business interests like the Collins/Sangster imprint in Jamaica. For the most part, these were token operations. They were also essentially the companies’ marketing and sales outlets as all publishing decisions, as well as editorial, design and production work, remained in the UK. Consequently there was no skills transfer or structured training in any aspect of book publishing.

My purpose is to provide a survey indicating some of the differences within the common law between one country and another. I must immediately make clear that there is at least one person, perhaps several, in this room (including the other speakers) who know very much more about any one of the topics I shall consider than I claim to do. I hope that they will excuse me for any inaccuracies or lapses of understanding in their own areas: my only purpose is to make general observations on the diversities between common law countries as I see them.

Catalogues are the essential element of every library. The following description of the main features of the documentation system maintained by the Library of the German Bundestag and of the most important principles of its catalogues will, more than anything else, show that they differ considerably from the forms of library documentation generally known in Germany. Though it would be particularly interesting to do so here, limitations of space unfortunately prevent a theoretical discussion of cataloguing principles in any detail. However, at this point it is important to stress that in view of the manifold requirements to be met by a modern library documentation and information system, the catalogues and documentation system of the Bundestag Library have proved themselves quite valuable.

In the post-colonial era, social movements in the Commonwealth Caribbean have empowered citizens to reclaim, redefine and further develop their identity. These movements, combined with a history of colonialism and transatlantic slavery in the region, have yielded a Caribbean culture “too diverse to be labeled.” Indeed, the Caribbean culture is composed of “a bastion of discrete identities as well as quarries of very invaluable raw material that can be used to build the bridges across cultural boundaries.” These distinct but potentially overlapping identities make the Commonwealth Caribbean a truly pluralistic region, at least at the cultural and social level. As modern legal and political systems, however, the states of the Commonwealth Caribbean have, in many ways, failed to sufficiently protect the non-dominant groups within Caribbean. Indeed, attempts to balance the majoritarian demands of democracy against the pluralist notion of minority rights protection have landed largely on the side of majorities.

An organization needs to consider a number of preservation issues when building a special collection. The level of control one can exert over these issues will vary, but they can have a direct impact on the integrity of special collection materials. This presentation will briefly deal with concerns related to the types of materials being collected; room and location considerations; environmental conditions; and pest and mold issues. Many of these are interrelated, so this is not a truly systematic process. Rather, one will probably find it necessary to go back and forth among these topics.