Chapter 5 is dedicated to the results of the fieldwork on procedural problems in the course of anti-dumping investigations. The fieldwork attempts to uncover the problems that arise in practice. The chapter first focuses on the Chinese exporters who shared their experience of US and EU investigation procedures. In addition, law firms were asked to take part in an online survey regarding their experience with these two jurisdictions. Lastly, officials at the relevant public authority in China, the Ministry of Commerce of the People’s Republic of China (MOFCOM), were interviewed as they take part in anti-dumping investigations to support their exporters. After the procedural problems from the field were identified, additional questions were sent to the investigating authorities in the US and EU. In this part of the book, these complaints and responses are gathered according to empirical data collection methods. Lastly, this chapter evaluates the data on these three jurisdictions.

Chapter 2 sets out the theories and relevant concepts used in the book. The arguments for and against anti-dumping laws are explained considering efficiency, fairness and political issues. The theories used are interdisciplinary in nature and require a political economy perspective. Also, macro and micro views need to be taken into account because anti-dumping investigations involve both states and firms. Later, the justifiable level of anti-dumping laws is discussed. Anti-dumping laws are ill-defined cures for market distortions; this book suggests that the improvement of procedural justice can reduce the negative reaction to anti-dumping laws by limiting their misuse.

Chapter 3 focuses on WTO disputes about anti-dumping issues. Anti-dumping or to be more specific, zeroing is the single-most litigated issue under WTO law. Although the Appellate Body has found zeroing method inconsistent with ADA several times, it is still being used with small alterations. Chapter 3 shows that the so-called jewel in the crown is sometimes ineffective. To do so, the role of the DSM in the anti-dumping issue is presented and anti-dumping cases dealing with procedural issues are analysed. The procedural issues mentioned in this chapter are as follows: calculation methods, transparency, public notice/notification, selection of investigated parties (sampling), submission of evidence and rebuttals, access to non-confidential files, hearings, newcomers and enforcement.

This chapter looks at the legal consequences of the demise of the molecular gene within science with the rise of postgenomics in the later part of the twentieth century. It also looks at the apparent dematerialisation of subject matter that occurred as a result of the Myriad decision, when biological subject matter came to be seen in terms of instructions or information rather than as a material chemical compound. It ends by showing that despite this apparent dematerialisation that materiality has continued to play an important role in the way that patent law interacts with biological subject matter.

The conclusion draws together the arguments of the previous chapters to return to the questions posed at the outset, namely what does it mean to grant patent protection over an immaterial subject matter and what role did science and technology play in allowing the law to deal with and accommodate that subject matter? After outlining the different roles that materiality has played in patent law over time and what its absence means, I speculate on the consequences of the recent shift to dematerialised subject matter and the role that science and technology might play in that process.

This chapter begins by outlining the dematerialisation of subject matter that has occurred over the last two decades or so and the problems that this has created for the law. I then explain the aims of the book, namely to look at three situations where patent law has already dealt with a dematerialised subject matter and the role that science and technology played in helping the law to accommodate that subject matter. I end by explaining the particular way that I approach subject matter in the book.

Chapter 7 shows how in the 1980s patent law came to view computer-related subject matter through the lens of ‘abstractness’ and the role that materiality played in determining the fate of that subject matter. The chapter also looks at how as a result of changes in technology, patent law gradually shifted away from the materiality of the subject matter to look at its specificity and in so doing how the subject matter was dematerialised.

This chapter begins by providing an overview of the key features of early chemical subject matter, namely that it was fickle, empirically based, and rapidly changing. After outlining the problems this created for patent law, I look at the way that patent law dealt with one of these problems. This was how to reconcile the way that chemical inventions were created with a mechanical understanding of invention that dominates in patent law.

After looking at how software was created and consumed in the 1960s and, as this changed, how it gave rise to questions about the role intellectual property might play in the emerging software industry, Chapter 5 looks at the contrasting ways that patentable subject matter was seen within the information technology industry and how these views were received within the law.