The Gazette 1993

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industry. The European experience is not unsimilar to the effect of the Sherman and Clayton Acts on the American IT sector. The most extensive coverage is given to intellectual property protection in Part III. Developments such as the European Patent Convention and the Community Patent Convention. The effective protection of the look and feel and sequence of software and databases continues to cause difficulties in Europe and America. In particular the limits of copyright protection in relation to the interoperability of user interfaces. Dr. Thomas Hoeran explains how computer chip protection in Europe was a response to the US Semiconductor Chip Protection Act 1984 (SCPA) which introduced sui generis protection for American chips, and denied it to EC chip makers in the absence of reciprocity. Like the SCPA EC Directive 87/54/EEC incorporated elements of patent, copyright and competitive law. Nootenboom discusses the current and future EC initiatives in the field of Trade Mark law which has limited importance for the protection of IT products and services. The following chapter compares US Trademark law and practice. Part IV of the makes a novel application of the EC Directive on Products Liability to injuries caused to consumers by IT products. This includes a discussion on who should bear the risk for software failures. David Bender explains how US products liability differs from the European model. Finally the development of a European telecommunications network infrastructure which includes the development of a pan- In Chapter 10, Erik C.

Previous reviews have stated that the Annual Review is "a very thorough guide" and "an invaluable aid" to have all the relevant case law and legislative developments for one year so readily available in one volume. As early as the first volume, this writer described the achievement as heralding the inauguration of a new Irish institution. We have not been disappointed. An investment in the Annual Review should be repaid handsomely.

Annual Review of Irish Law, 1991

R. Byrne and W. Binchy, [Dublin, The Round Hall Press, 1993, 1 + 494 pp, IR£85.00, hardback.]

Lewis F. Powell, Jr, Associate Justice, Supreme Court of the

United States, (retired), writing on the late Professor Paul Freund of Harvard University stated that when Paul and he were at Harvard, the university there could fairly boast that its law faculty included the lions Administrative Law, Thomas Reed Powell instructing Constitutional Law, and Roscoe Pound teaching Jurisprudence. [106 Harvard Law Review, 3 (1992)]. The time will come when lawyers will look at our time and note that Raymond Byrne and William Binchy were among the great lions of the Irish legal academy. Apart from their other achievements and works, their Annual Review of Irish Law, will have secured their reputation for posterity. To some, this may appear grandiose, but not to readers of the Annual Review, now in its fifth volume. For those who may not yet be familiar with the Annual Review, the present volume provides a review of legal developments, judicial and statutory, that occurred in 1991. The law is considered under thirty-three main headings with several sub- headings. The main headings include Administrative Law, Agriculture, Commercial Law, Company Law, Constitutional Law, Contract Law, Company Law, European Communities, Family Law, Labour Law, Practice and Procedure, Safety and Health and Torts. of the legal academy: Felix Frankfurter was teaching

Dr. Eamonn G. Hall

The Law of Information Technology in Europe 1992: A comparison with the USA

Edited by A.P. Meijboom and C. Prins. Published by Kluwer as part of its Computer Law Series. This book consists of a series of chapters by expert EC authors on the interaction between EC law (competition, intellecutal property, products liability, and telecommunications) and Information Technology (IT) in the context of the completion of the Single Market. The US authors provide an overview of the corresponding legal situation in the USA. The law of IT covers computer hardware and software and telecommunications. The book is divided into five parts, Part I provides an introduction to EC law for those who are not familiar with the way the EC operates. Part II highlights the effect of EC competition law on distribution agreements, transfers of technology, and joint ventures in the computer

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