The law of unfair competition stands at the intersection between several spheres of_x000D_ law: these include tort law, antitrust law, intellectual property law, consumer protection_x000D_ law and various statutory regimes regulating specific areas of commercial_x000D_ conduct. Given the divergence between the legal traditions of different legal systems,_x000D_ particularly between the common law and civil law based jurisdictions, the organisational structure of this area of the law varies dramatically from country to country. The scope of unfair competition encompasses areas of conduct as diverse as product design, sales, advertising, marketing and other commercial dealings with a trader's competitors, customers, and parties upstream or downstream from the business. While all these legal systems recognise the importance of regulating the behaviour of traders in the marketplace to ensure compliance with their respective ethical norms of fair conduct and honesty, their individual approaches towards responding to these issues depend very much upon the architecture of their respective legal regimes.

The opening chapter alone holds forth the promise of a tantalising read, unusual_x000D_ for a book on commercial law. It begins with an account of English adventurers_x000D_ bound for Virginia who are shipwrecked off Bermuda. This sets the scene for the_x000D_ subsequent settlement of the uninhabited islands by the British in 1609. The incident_x000D_ fires the imagination of the Bard. He references the "Bermoothes" in The Tempest (1st ed., 1623), conceiving "the islands as a place where valuable property could be safely hidden" (at p. 3). Fact, fiction and fortune are masterfully blended into a cocktail of factors explaining Bermuda's development as an offshore financial centre. It is evident that painstaking efforts were made to create a legal work that is at once both practical and scholarly. This book rejects the patois of the commercial marketplace for a more elegant literary style which flows right through the book and lends cohesiveness to the contributions by some 25 authors. The result is a comprehensive manual for offshore business in Bermuda and one which is a reflection of the country's sophistication as an offshore financial centre.