Very important book, especially as Congress is considering expanding the already extensive powers of copyright owners.Intellectual property commentary has not spent enough time on the fact of IP overenforcement as it confronts users. Mazzone's book highlights an underappreciated problem of rights fabrication that threatens to become a form of private legislation. If the intellectual property system is to genuinely promote innovation and creativity, it will need to address the problems he describes. Mazzone's policy recommendations are wise and often original, both recognizing and building on a large law review literature on IP reform.
There are many works that critique copyright overenforcement, but none frames the issue in the way that Mazzone does. Moreover, his closing arguments present a uniquely level-headed and persuasive account of the policy changes that could improve matters.
Mazzone hits the "sweet spot" between sparse summary and prolix pontification. Mazzone is a gifted writer who can make an argument about even dry topics move briskly and engagingly. Overall, a wonderful read and a worthy contribution to the IP literature.
More information at Copyfraud and Other Abuses of Intellectual Property Law
I am an attorney with a decent background in the basics of 
In The Oxford Introductions to U.S. Law: Intellectual Property, prominent intellectual property scholar Dan Hunter provides a precise, engaging overview and careful analysis of current laws of intellectual property and their history. Hunter first focuses on the central areas of intellectual property law, including copyright, patent, trademark, and trade secrets. He then explores the politics, economics, psychology and rhetoric of possession and control that influence and interact with this area of law. 
I wanted to really give this book a higher rating but I feel in all honesty that I cannot. The problem here is that the book reads too much like a prosecuting attorney's case, starting from the premise that IP is an outrageous, rent-seeker's grab, that we could have lots of good stuff without IP, and that lots of things have indeed been invented and produced without IP. To a degree, the authors provide a great deal of evidence for their case, but I also was irritated by the sometimes strident tone adopted here. And some of the examples they give of how creativity works without IP are laughable. For example, on page 30, they write: "For at least three thousand years, musical and literary works have been created in pretty much every society, and in the complete absence - in fact, often under the explicit prohibition - of any kind of copyright protection". Well, to focus on books, such things only began to be produced on any significant scale (at a time when adult literacy was negligible) after the invention of the printing press. Copying of others' literary efforts would have been almost impossible outside the confines of a few learned aristocrats and monks. For a large chunk of human recorded history, the only stuff that got produced was produced in relatively tiny numbers and read by an equally relatively tiny number of people. Okay, that does not necessarily invalidate some of the points being made, but it is striking that the authors don't mention this rather obvious point.
The average business book is really a business article, padded out to book length via stings of anecdotes and repetition of the obvious. Not in this case. Blaxill and Eckardt have a substantive case to make - namely, that in the search for sustainable competitive advantage, most managers are looking in the wrong place. According to the authors, conventional management efforts - focused as they are on operational efficiencies and "best practices" - are bound to fail, because in an era of hypercompetition, traditional advantages can't be defended for any length of time.
This comprehensive guide provides an overview of patents, trademarks, and copyrights. Authors Michael Davis and famed Harvard professor Arthur Miller provide authoritative coverage on the foundations of patent protection, patentability, and the patenting process. 
Adrian Johns' PIRACY is a wide-ranging and expansive view of a subject that is of intense interest as books, music and movies shift to digital dissemination.
The strength of this book is that it provides a comprehensible introduction to intellectual property - focusing on patents. If you want to learn something about intellectual property without wading too deep into lawyerspeak - this book may interest you. In addition to patents - trademarks, copyrights and trade secrets are discussed; other aspects of intellectual property are waved at. The last chapter provides dated coverage of intellectual property as it relates to the Internet - mostly focusing on business method patents. This is interesting from a business perspective but the authors do not seem versed in the technical aspects of E-Commerce. Laches and estoppel are demystified and the book presents what looks like solid advice on how to enforce your rights against a group of infringers (attack the weakest one first). There are clearly divided sections (making the frequent pauses that I occasionally made between readings convenient), key ideas are highlighted in an attractive manner and charts and graphs are well presented.
