Landmark Intellectual Property Cases and Their Legacy

Citation

Heath, C. and Kamperman Sanders, A. (2012), "Landmark Intellectual Property Cases and Their Legacy", International Journal of Law and Management, Vol. 54 No. 1, pp. 89-90. https://doi.org/10.1108/17542431211189632

Introduction

Intellectual property is often the foundation of competitive advantage within an industry segment, enabling a company to sell information rich products whilst preventing copying of a wide variety of inventions, designs and artistic creations. Often whole industries can be created from an intellectual property protected area and this protection is especially important for products that are expensive to develop but are cheap to copy.

This review looks at the latest offering in a series of publications based upon the Institute of European Studies of Macau (IEEM) International Intellectual Property Conferences. The book provides an historical perspective in an international context by using famous landmark cases to illustrate some of the wider tenets of intellectual property law. These cases range from Shostakovich to eBay and from Lego to Budweiser gathered under the framing theme of “legacy”. This book is aimed squarely at the advanced study of the area as it requires an amount of prior knowledge of the basic principles of intellectual property.

The stand out chapters for a reader will depend on his or her subject specialisms as chapters are both well written and well edited into article form from the conference presentations. I will make mention of two of the cases that are analysed as they are representative of the quality of the book as a whole.

LEGO v. The World

“Hitting the Bricks: Protection the LEGO^® Brick around the World” by Aldo Nicotra presents an engaging narrative and outlines the range of permitted and infringing imitations through the use of legal devices such as consumer protection, unfair competition law, copyright, registered designs and passing off. Lego has been described as the toy of the century with enough LEGO bricks having been manufactured to give each of the world's 6 billion inhabitants an average of 62 LEGO bricks. Success has brought about imitation and the degree of world market penetration has meant that this imitation has taken place on an international scale, with European and Asian countries featuring in the selected cases related to LEGO. From an INTERLEGO A.G. (who manufactures LEGO) perspective any competing block has the potential to lessen the market penetration LEGO continues to enjoy so a range of legal protection strategies can be seen in an international context.

The technical detail of the cases gives an indication of the types of subject matter that are likely to be brought up for example could a consumer be mistaken that a competitor block was a LEGO block and how the clutch power or binding power of LEGO and competitor blocks compare. Alongside the technical and legal analysis the international cases which use the intellectual property mechanisms of each specific country illustrate how the approaches can be pieced together as a strategy. The chapter outlines the problematic and wide ranging approaches that area needed to be taken to protect a commercially successful product in the various intellectual property distinct domains across the world.

Darcy v. Allen

Mathew Fisher deals with Darcy v. Allen a case that focuses on the intellectual property related to playing cards. Within the standard student texts it appears as a simple explanation of what can and cannot be protected which in turn illustrates the development of patents over time. Within Fisher's dialogue this is expanded quite significantly; accurately moving through the history of monopoly in regard to patents. His analysis is thorough and the introductive narrative structure that is used is highly engaging.

The case is a fairly simple one but it has both a political and constitutional backdrop alongside a captivating judgment. This has caused the case to be described as “One of the outstanding decisions of the English Common Law” by D.S. Davies in Further Light on the Case of Monopolies LQR48 (1932) 394 at 394.

Conclusion

The two cases that have been highlighted in this review are indicative of the quality of the book as a whole. Further to this the series of books arising from the conference in Macau are uniformly excellent in regards to their conception, delivery, editing and binding and I am glad to see that this has continued in the most recent offering from IEEM under the authorship of Heath and Kamperman Sanders.