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The purpose of this monograph is to examine the main elements of the Copyright Designs & Patents Act 1988 which received the Royal Assent on the 15th November 1988. The Act provided for a major overhaul of the law on copyright and on registered designs, as well as certain adjustments to patent and trademark law and two major new regimes on performers' rights and design rights. While this is a major domestic reform the law is unlikely to remain unaltered for long because of the move towards a single market within the E.E.C. by 1992. This will lead to the introduction of harmonised regimes on the various elements of intellectual property law such as copyright and industrial design which will no doubt require some readjustment to U.K. domestic law. Recently the E.E.C. Commission published a Green Paper on “Copyright and the Challenge of Technology” which suggests solutions to some questions such as the vexed problem of illegal home taping which are different to those adopted by the U.K. in the new Act. [On 21/12/88 a draft directive on Copyright & Computer Software which proposes a harmonised regime for the protection of computer programs and related matters was published]. It also has to be borne in mind that while Article 222 of the Treaty of Rome states that the treaty does not affect the existence of national intellectual property right regimes the “exercise” of these national rights may be found to infringe the provisions of the Treaty on free movement of goods (Arts. 30–36) or on competition law (Arts. 85–86).

The purpose of this paper is to illustrate and examine the effects of ultimate ownership, institutionality and their interactions on capital structure in a unified framework, based on evidence from China.

Using six years of panel data of Chinese non-financial listed firms between 2004 and 2009, this paper estimates with correlation analysis and multiple regression analysis.

This paper finds that debt financing facilitates the ultimate owner's expropriation behavior. The separation of control rights and cash flow rights is positively related to capital structure, while cash flow rights negatively affect it. Compared with private ultimate owners, state ultimate owners have less incentive to reap the benefits of expropriation, implying that the separation of control rights and cash flow rights has a smaller effect on the capital structure of state-owned firms. The improvement of institutionality can restrain ultimate owners' expropriation behavior, and regional institutional development is negatively related to capital structure. The separation of control rights and cash flow rights has a smaller positive effect on capital structure in regions with better-developed institutionality.

This paper incorporates ultimate ownership and institutionality into a unified analytical framework of capital structure. It not only enriches related studies on capital structure, but also helps us understand the institutional roots of irrational capital structure behaviors in China. This paper also provides further evidence on ultimate owners' expropriation of minority shareholders through debt financing.

To examine how an incomplete and biased legal/regulatory framework governing the allocation of property rights within a residential community in Hong Kong blocks the natural choice of a market contractual arrangement for the governance of the community as well as the management services.

This paper applies an institutional economic framework to examine the rationale of adopting different governance structures for different types of assets. A detailed case study is examined based on this framework and the governance structure of this community is analysed and the rationale behind the chosen structure is examined accordingly.

It is found that a unified governance structure has been adopted in this community, not by the residents in the community, but by the developer who has a controlling share of property rights and vested interests on the undeveloped part of the community.

The case study, though detailed, limits to one community, which itself is very unique in the physical environment. In the future, different communities should be compared under different management models to examine the effect of developers' vested interests in the community and the governance structure, and how would a fair delineation mechanism of property rights will provide a more efficient management model for the community.

It is suggested that an overall examination of the way property rights are delineated in Hong Kong is needed to protect the rights of individual property owners, so that a fairer and more efficient system can be in place.

This paper argues that the choice of governance structure in a residential community under some special socio‐political environments is also facilitated by the legal/regulatory framework delineating property rights.

The purpose of this paper is to test existing theoretical models relating to management agreements and “developer abuse” in relation to multi‐unit housing developments through applying them to a new jurisdiction: New Zealand.

The paper uses a combination of case studies from reported legal cases, and a socio‐legal framework, to apply existing models to New Zealand.

The analysis shows that existing models are accurate, but can be improved and refined through a deeper examination of the issues arising from decided cases. New phenomena were identified that require more attention.

This analysis is restricted to decided cases and empirical research may allow further findings. The research was also limited to New Zealand as a test of existing models.

The analysis in this paper shows that there are difficulties with recent law reforms, and more attention is needed to legislative solutions to the problems identified in existing literature and decided cases.

This research may help educate the public about the issues arising from management agreements.

By applying existing models relating to body corporate management agreements and “developer abuse” to a new jurisdiction, this paper shows the usefulness of those models. The models remain to be tested in other jurisdictions, and this paper adds to existing frameworks for those scholars who do so. It will also have use for policy makers in this area.

We argue that the stakeholder and CSR literature can benefit from more systematic thinking about ownership. We discuss general notions of ownership in the economics and legal literature and the entrepreneurial notion of ownership we have developed in prior work. On this basis, we argue that stakeholder theory needs to deal more systematically with ownership as an economic function that can be exercised with greater or lesser ability, may be complementary to other economic functions, and works better when assigned to homogeneous groups. Some stakeholder groups are likely to lack what we call “ownership competence,” even if they have made relationship-specific investments, in part because of a diversity of interests. We also discuss CSR from the perspective of ownership and support Friedman’s original position, but with a twist. The point of Friedman’s paper is not that firms “should” maximize profits, but that managerial pursuit of “socially responsible” activities in a discretionary way imposes costs on owners. We suggest this problem is exacerbated with entrepreneurial managers who can devise new ways to prop up their self-interested actions with new creative CSR initiatives.

The purpose of this paper is to examine whether the type of ultimate controllers (i.e. private vs state) affects corporate disclosure quality and whether the relationship between the type of ultimate controllers and corporate disclosure quality is moderated by the separation of ownership and control.

This study employs the data of 405 Chinese listed firms in 2005. Annual reports were reviewed to collect the data including the type of ultimate owners, cash‐flow rights, and control rights; and the ratings of corporate disclosure quality were obtained from the Shenzhen Stock Exchange website. Ordered logistic regression tested the hypotheses.

It was found that corporate disclosure quality is lower for firms ultimately controlled by individuals than for firms ultimately controlled by the state. Also, the negative effect of private ultimate ownership on corporate disclosure quality is stronger for firms with high deviation of cash‐flow rights and control rights.

These findings suggest that privatizing state‐owned companies may increase the expropriation of minority shareholders by controlling shareholders if the privatization does not reduce the separation of cash‐flow rights from control rights. Thus, it may be necessary to strengthen the governance role of minority shareholders and constrain the divergence between cash‐flow rights and control rights of the ultimate owners when state‐owned companies are privatized.

This study contributes to the literature on the expropriation of minority shareholders by examining the main effect of the type of ultimate controllers and the interactive effect of ultimate ownership type and the divergence of ownership and control on corporate disclosure quality.

This chapter provides an overview of the five main modes of intellectual property (IP) protection – patents, copyrights, trademarks, trade secrets, and designs – available in the United States, the European Union, and Japan. After describing the purposes of and principal differences among the five types of IP protection and outlining the advantages of each form, the chapter provides country- and region-specific information. The authors highlight the aspects of IP law in which international harmonization has, or has not yet, occurred, and offer insights into the relative advantages of various national and regional IP protection systems.

Most people associate ownership with the ability to control something. In the USA, employee share (or stock) ownership plans (ESOPs) are one of the principal forms of employee ownership. However, most ESOPs give employees very limited rights of control over the company they own. This paper explore this conflict by examining theories of property and ownership to determine whether the right to participate in decision-making is inherent in the idea of ownership as it is generally understood. Ultimately, the author argues that the law governing ESOPs should be revised to give employees a larger role in the governance of their companies.

This paper considers the concept of ownership both historically and analytically. The author examines the roots of property theory in the work of John Locke and contemporary theorists, as well as contemporary theorizing about ownership.

There are two kinds of ownership: legal ownership and psychological ownership. In legal ownership, the right to participation is inherent but alienable, so one can legally be an owner of something but have no right of participation. Psychological ownership primarily arises from a sense of control. Legal ownership confers some part of the bundle of rights associated with property. Psychological ownership conveys a feeling of efficacy, responsibility and control, but no formal rights. The author argues that, for employee ownership to be more than mere property-holding, it must include meaningful participation in decision-making, including governance.

This paper is only concerned with ESOPs in the USA. Although the findings may be applicable, it does not address other forms of employee ownership or employee ownership outside of the USA.

People associate ownership with the ability to control something, so when workers are told they own their company but then find they have few control rights, it may undermine their sense of ownership. This then has negative implications for the company's success. To ensure meaningful levels of governance rights, policy-makers should revise the laws governing ESOPs to require greater involvement by employees.

Clarifying ambiguities around ownership will help support arguments for affording employee-owners greater control rights in their companies, which will have various spill-over effects.

Practitioners and scholars alike deploy the term, “ownership” but ascribe different meanings to it. The distinction between legal and psychological ownership is largely lacking in the ESOP literature. Clarifying this distinction will help to move the discussion forward regarding employee participation in ESOPs. In addition, the paper provides an original analysis of property that demonstrates the importance of the right to control, showing that the traditional ESOP structure may violate important aspects of that right.

In the light of the property relativist theory, the purpose of this paper is to review the impact of radical amendments to strata legislation in Singapore in 1999 which, together with changes to the planning framework, stimulated private‐sector led redevelopment in Singapore. This was achieved through the introduction of majority rule (rather than unanimity) in collective sales (CS) of strata developments. The paper also addresses the issue of how a balance can be achieved between the property rights of majority and minority strata owners.

The paper uses case‐studies, planning provisions, and data on property transactions to analyse the effectiveness of the measures taken to address Singapore's land‐scarcity problem. Legal terms and their significance are addressed in a manner that will also be comprehensible to a non‐legally trained readership.

The cases demonstrate attempts by the authorities to clarify, and to provide a better balance to, the position of those whose property rights had been sacrificed at the altar of redevelopment and urban rejuvenation in Singapore. Nevertheless, there still remain numerous pockets of resistance to CS. These still need to be addressed to reassure the minority in the context of the property relativist theory.

The continued groundswell of protests against collective sale means that there are further issues that need to be addressed to mitigate the plight of the minority. The response of parliament has been reactive, but it remains to be seen whether the minority's concerns have been adequately addressed.

The analysis of the cases, whose decisions turned on the authorities' interpretation of the controversial legislation, is instructive. These can provide valuable pointers for policy makers in other jurisdictions contemplating urban rejuvenation. The twin issues that are dealt with relate to how private‐sector redevelopment can be incentivised through planning measures, without riding roughshod over individuals' private property rights.