Editors? Pick

• Author: T. Dreier - L. Guibault - A. Metzger - M. Peguera
• Pages: 66-69

2013

66

4

T. Dreier, L. Guibault, A. Metzger, M. Peguera

Editors’ Pick

© 2013 T. Dreier, L. Guibault, A. Metzger, M. Peguera

Everybody may disseminate this ar ticle by electroni c means and make it available for downlo ad under the terms and

conditions of the Digita l Peer Publishing Licence (DPPL). A copy of the license text may be obtaine d at http://nbn-resolving.

de/urn:nbn:de:00 09-dppl-v3-en8.

Recommended citation: T. Dreier, L. Guibault, A. M etzger, M. Peguera, Editors’ Pick, 4 (2013) JIPITEC 6 6, para. 1

In this new column, which from now on shall appear

at regular intervals, the editors of JIPITEC would like

to present to their readers monographs that in their

mind are either outstanding or are worth being men-

tioned and recommended to the interested reader.

Each individual editor is responsible for his or her

own choice and each text reflects personal interests

and preferences rather than an editorial policy.

1 To open this new format, Thomas Dreier* would like

to draw attention to a monograph by

Zech, Herbert: Information als Schutz-

gegenstand. Series “JusPriv“ No. 166. Mohr

Siebeck. Tübingen 2012. XXV, 488 pp.

2

After having written his habilitation at the

University of Bayreuth within the framework of the

university’s graduate school, “Geistiges Eigentum

und Gemeinfreiheit,” Prof. Zech has joined the law

faculty of the University of Basel in Switzerland,

where he now teaches civil law and IP law, with a

focus on intellectual property in life sciences. Writing

a second academic monograph after a dissertation

in order to qualify for the career path of tenured

professorship at a law faculty is still a particular

feature of German academic tradition. Working on

a habilitation may be a long and, at times, tedious

exercise, but it has resulted in quite a number of



analysis of isolated legal issues.

3

    

to devote his attention to the analysis of the legal

protection of information. Rather, with regards

to German legal literature in the area of civil law,

Zech can tie in with earlier works by Wiebe, Dreier,

Haedicke, Peukert and others. In Switzerland and

Austria the works by Druey and, more recently, by

Mayer-Schönberger can be mentioned. Following

in the tradition of Wiebe – from whom Zech has

borrowed the title of his work and who already in

    

information as an “object of protection” – Zech

now widens the view and also discusses exclusive

protection schemes for information other than

through intellectual property rights. Thus,

personality rights, the protection of trade secrets,

rules against unfair competition (in particular, the

protection against unfair product imitation) and

property legislation governing rights with regard

to the physical embodiment of information likewise

come into focus. By this approach, it becomes clear

that even in continental European law tradition,

rights with regard to information – including

intellectual property rights – can much better be

described as a bundle of different rights vis-à-vis

third persons, rather than one solitary right of

property with regard to a particular object. In this

respect, the term “allocation” (“Zuordnung”) of

exclusive rights or even goods likewise becomes



been traditionally been understood in German legal

literature. Of course, on the one hand, the approach

chosen to examine the exclusivity of rights with

regard to information only indirectly focuses on

the communicative aspect of information. However,

on the other hand, the notion of information is

understood by Zech in a broad sense to cover all

information goods such as news, images, gene

sequences or stored data.

4

In an introductory part, the book provides an

excellent overview of the state of discussion in

German legal literature regarding property and/

or exclusive rights concerning information. Then,

borrowing from Benkler and Lessig, who distinguish

content layer, code layer and physical layer of

information, as his central thesis Zech proposes to

classify the legal protection schemes for information

according to information’s characteristics as

semantic, syntactic and structural. Whereas

semantic information is characterized by its inherent

meaning, syntactic information can be described

as the signs representing semantic information.

Ultimately, structural information is information

in its physical embodiment. This differentiation