Semiotics of trademark law and brand intellectual property
Kristian Bankov · Edward Elgar Publishing eBooks · 2023
In this chapter I will review the most important aspects of intellectual property (IP) that stand out when we apply the semiotic approach to this cultural and economic reality of contemporary life. Like everything else in socio-culture, intellectual property is evolving, acquiring increasing semiotic complexity. This complexity reflects the increasing role of communication technologies, their impact on mechanisms of economic value generation, and those of intangible conspicuous consumption, in turn reflecting the communication strategies of companies. One of the greatest contributions of semiotics to intellectual property is precisely the formal modelling of these processes thanks to the application of different sign models. In the second part of the chapter, I will examine, again thanks to semiotics, some challenges of global digitalization that are coming into conflict with the very philosophy of intellectual property and copyright in the present-day legislation.