Catherine Seville

EU intellectual property law and policy

Intellectual property (IP) is a crucial contributor to economic growth and competitiveness within the EU. This book offers a compact and accessible account of EU intellectual property law and policy, covering copyright, patents, designs, trademarks and the enforcement of rights. The author also addresses aspects of the free movement of goods and services, competition law, customs measures and anti-counterfeiting efforts. Setting EU intellectual property law in its wider international context, this work reveals the framework within which the national IP laws of member states operate. The book seeks to highlight the most important policy issues and arguments of relevance to the EU, both within the Union, and in its relations with the rest of the world. With its detailed references, cross-referencing and suggestions for further readings, EU Intellectual Property Law and Policy is essential reading for postgraduate students and academic lawyers in IP and EU law. Practitioners seeking a broad account of the area will also appreciate this important contribution.

FASHIONING INTELLECTUAL PROPERTY: EXHIBITION, ADVERTISING AND THE PRESS, 1789–1918

This enjoyable book, written by an intellectual property lawyer and a media historian, has the clear aim, ‘of providing an account of some of the wider intellectual, cultural and social circumstances in which our intellectual property was framed in the long nineteenth century’ (ix). It also sketches its modern ‘refashioning’ in response to the ‘spectacular’ new forms of creativity and innovation of the time (5). The rise of the professional press in Britain and her colonies was a major driver of the very significant changes in the landscape of intellectual property. Intellectual property, and its rightful contours, engaged a wide range of commentators. The authors acknowledge generously the work of earlier historians of intellectual property and draw on a depth of reading. However, they emphasise that their aim is not to offer a strict ‘legal’ history but to offer a picture of this important area of law within its economic, social and cultural contexts. Their approach is to offer emblematic cases and issues. Familiar material is reconsidered and recontextualised. This is a positive choice, which makes the material accessible to a wider readership than the specialist intellectual property historian. The book is divided into three broad sections, which span the late eighteenth to early twentieth centuries. The first addresses copyright. To a copyright historian, the examples chosen are in one sense on the margins of the subject, focusing as they do on unpublished works. But this is, in another sense, precisely the interest of the cases. Print culture was exploding during this period. Alexander Pope’s dispute with the Grub Street biographer, Edmund Curll (1741), saw the worlds of propriety and professionalism clash over Curll’s illicit publication of Dean Swift’s Correspondence* including letters from Pope which he himself had published earlier (12 13). Lord Hardwicke dealt with the case as one of statutory copyright under the Statute of Anne, but although the question of property in unpublished works was not resolved here, it was certainly raised and debated. The tension continued between natural law conceptions and References

III. Intellectual Property

This area of law is dominated by the drive towards harmonisation, and a considerable body of legislation and case law continues to be generated. The vision is of investment in creativity and innovation, leading to growth and competitiveness of a wide range of European industries. Significant progress—sometimes unexpected—can be recorded in certain areas, but it should also be acknowledged that the scale of the problems precludes easy solutions in others.