'This is not a Bill to legalize looting': Wartime Regulation of Enemy-Owned Intellectual Property in Australia

摘要

At the beginning of both the First and Second World Wars, the Australian Parliament passed a series of statutes establishing a system for the continued regulation of domestic, foreign and enemy-owned intellectual property (IP) rights. One element of this scheme was designed to allow the community to use enemy-owned IP, through a mechanism of avoidance or suspension of these rights in the First World War, or licensing in the Second World War, where such use was in the public interest. This article is the first exploration of this wartime management of enemy-owned IP and examines the usage of this system throughout both hostilities. The dual-conflict and dual-rights analysis presented here reveals much about the legal, practical and social realities of the scheme and broader issues for IP law more generally, including the inchoate application of the concept of the "public interest", a term proposed by the Australian Productivity Commission to be included in the current compulsory licensing provisions of the Patents Act 1990 (Cth).