Exhaustion: A Guiding Concept in the Digital World?

HKU Lecture in Intellectual Property

Date: March 4, 2016

Time: 12:30pm – 1:30pm

Venue: Academic Conference Room, 11/F, Cheng Yu Tung Tower, HKU

Speaker: Professor Reto M. Hilty, Director, The Max Planck Institute for Innovation and Competition

Abstract
The lecture will address the question whether and to what extent the “exhaustion rule” still applies in the digital age. In particular, it focuses on business models in which download is replaced by mere streaming. In the light of absent copies to which the “first-sale doctrine” could apply, different questions will be explored, in particular the transferability of users’ rights (with a special view to the “implied license doctrine”), lessons we might learn from the software debate (“Used-Soft”), but also whether it is up to copyright law to provide an appropriate protection of consumers’ interests.

Biography
Professor Reto M. Hilty is the Director of the Max Planck Institute for Innovation and Competition. He is also Professor at the Universities of Zurich and Munich. He studied mechanical engineering at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology, Zurich, and law at the University of Zurich, school of law. He was head of department and member of board of Directors at the Swiss Federal Institute of Intellectual Property, Berne (1994-97) and received his postdoctoral lecture qualification at the University of Zurich in 2000. Subsequently he became Full Professor at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology, Zurich, before joining the Max Planck Institute in 2002.