This study examines the law of intellectual property in China from imperial times to the present. It draws on history, politics, economics, sociology, and the arts, and on interviews with officials, business people, lawyers, and perpetrators and victims of 'piracy'. The author asks why the Chinese, with their early bounty of scientific and artistic creations, are only now devising legal protection for such endeavors and why such protection is more rhetoric than reality on the Chinese mainland. In the process, he sheds light on the complex relation between law and political culture in China. The book goes on to examine recent efforts in the People's Republic of China to develop intellectual property law, and uses this example to highlight the broader problems with China's program of law reform.

This sweeping study examines the law of intellectual property in Chinese civilization from imperial days to the present. It uses materials drawn from law, the arts and other fields as well as extensive interviews with Chinese and foreign officials, business people, lawyers, and perpetrators and victims of "piracy."

A detailed historical look at how copyright was negotiated and protected by authors, publishers, and the state in late imperial and modern China In Pirates and Publishers, Fei-Hsien Wang reveals the unknown social and cultural history of copyright in China from the 1890s through the 1950s, a time of profound sociopolitical changes. Wang draws on a vast range of previously underutilized archival sources to show how copyright was received, appropriated, and practiced in China, within and beyond the legal institutions of the state. Contrary to common belief, copyright was not a problematic doctrine simply imposed on China by foreign powers with little regard for Chinese cultural and social traditions. Shifting the focus from the state legislation of copyright to the daily, on-the-ground negotiations among Chinese authors, publishers, and state agents, Wang presents a more dynamic, nuanced picture of the encounter between Chinese and foreign ideas and customs. Developing multiple ways for articulating their understanding of copyright, Chinese authors, booksellers, and publishers played a crucial role in its growth and eventual institutionalization in China. These individuals enforced what they viewed as copyright to justify their profit, protect their books, and crack down on piracy in a changing knowledge economy. As China transitioned from a late imperial system to a modern state, booksellers and publishers created and maintained their own economic rules and regulations when faced with the absence of an effective legal framework. Exploring how copyright was transplanted, adopted, and practiced, Pirates and Publishers demonstrates the pivotal roles of those who produce and circulate knowledge.

China is by far the world's leading producer of pirated goods—from films and books to clothing, from consumer electronics to aircraft parts. As China becomes a full participant in the international economy, its inability to enforce intellectual property rights is coming under escalating international scrutiny. What is the impact, Andrew C. Mertha asks, of external pressure on China's enforcement of intellectual property? The conventional wisdom sees a simple correlation between greater pressure and better domestic compliance with international norms and declared national policy. Mertha's research tells a different story: external pressure may lead to formal agreements in Beijing, resulting in new laws and official regulations, but it is China's complex network of bureaucracies that decides actual policy and enforcement. The structure of the administrative apparatus that is supposed to protect intellectual property rights makes it possible to track variation in the effects of external pressure for different kinds of intellectual property.Mertha shows that while the sustained pressure of state-to-state negotiations has shaped China's patent and copyright laws, it has had little direct impact on the enforcement of those laws. By contrast, sustained pressure from inside China, on the part of foreign trademark-owners and private investigation companies in their employ, provides a far greater rate of trademark enforcement and spurs action from anti-counterfeiting agencies.

The city seen from a unique point of view: those who want to break in and loot its treasures At the heart of Geoff Manaugh's A Burglar's Guide to the City is an unexpected and thrilling insight: the city as seen through the eyes of robbers. From experts on both sides of the law, readers learn to understand the city as an arena of possible tunnels and picked locks—and architecture itself as an obstacle to be outwitted and second-guessed. Never again will readers enter a bank without imagining the vault geometry, or visit a museum without plotting ways to bring their favorite painting home with them. From how to pick locks (and the tools required) to how to case a bank on the edge of town, readers will learn to spot the vulnerabilities, blind spots, and unseen openings that surround us all the time. This simultaneously allows us to view the city—from specific buildings and individual rooms to whole neighborhoods—through the privileged eyes of FBI investigating agents and security consultants, people dedicated both to solving and to preempting these attempts at devious entry. Full of absurd and marvelous stories of heists and capers, and offering a kind of criminal X-ray of the built environment, A Burglar's Guide to the City includes its own twist: the realization, hidden in its final chapter, that all along the book has been laying out the relevant details for plotting the perfect robbery, an ambitious and real proposal for robbing a bank in New York City.

From the New York Times bestselling author of Prisoners in the Castle, a dramatic portrait of the master thief of the nineteenth century: Adam Worth “Fascinating . . . a brisk, lively, colorful biography of an amazing criminal.”—The New York Times (Best Books of the Year) The Victorian era’s most infamous and iconic thief, the inspiration for Sherlock Holmes’s Professor Moriarty, Adam Worth was known as the Napoleon of crime. Suave, cunning, and fearless, Worth learned early that the best way to succeed was to steal. And steal he did. Following a strict code of honor, Worth won the respect of Victorian society. He also aroused its fear by becoming a chilling phantom, mingling undetected with the upper classes, whose valuables he brazenly stole. His most celebrated heist: Gainsborough’s grand portrait of the Duchess of Devonshire—ancestor of Diana, Princess of Wales—a painting Worth adored and often slept with for twenty years. With a brilliant gang that included “Piano” Charley, a jewel thief, train robber, and playboy, and “the Scratch” Becker, master forger, Worth secretly ran operations from New York to London, Paris, and South Africa—until betrayal and a Pinkerton man finally brought him down. The Napoleon of Crime is a grand, dazzling tour into the gaslit underworld of the nineteenth century, and into the doomed genius of a criminal mastermind.

They say diamonds are a girl’s best friend—until they’re stolen. Ania Throne is devoted to her jewelry company. The daughter of one of the world’s most famous jewelers, she arrives in Cannes with a stunning new collection. But a shocking theft by the notorious thief known as the Leopard throws her into upheaval—and plunges her on an unexpected hunt that challenges everything she believes. Jerome Curtis thinks he’s seen it all, especially when it comes to crime. Until he’s hired to investigate the loss of Ania Thorne’s collection, his every skill put to the test as he chases after a mysterious master-mind responsible for some of the costliest heists in history—and finds himself in a tangled web with a woman he really shouldn’t fall in love with. From the fabled Carlton Hotel to the elegant boulevards of Paris, Ania and Jerome must race against time to catch a thief before the thief catches them. With everything on the line, can they solve the steal or will the steal take more than diamonds from them? Set in the late 1950s, THE STEAL is a romantic caper by bestselling authors C.W. Gortner and M.J. Rose.