The EU’s ‘Design Approach’ represented a unique attempt to protect industrial design and designers in and on their own terms. It has now been in place for more than a decade and this book, including contributions from leading international scholars, takes stock and attempts to find out what became of the Design Approach: Is it still observed; what has it achieved; how does it interact with other areas of the law; what became of the spare parts problem and how did the world respond to it?
This book examines the causes and consequences of social standards in US and EU preferential trade agreements (PTAs). PTAs are the new reality of the global trading system. Pursued by both developed and developing countries, they increasingly incorporate labor and environmental issues to prevent a race to the bottom in social regulation and counter-protectionism. Using principal-agent theory to explore why US PTAs have stricter social standards than those signed by the EU, Postnikov argues that the level of institutional insulation of trade policy executives from interest groups and legislators determines the design of social standards. In the EU, where institutional insulation is high, social standards mirror the normative preferences of the European Commission leading to a softer approach. In the US, where such insulation is low, social standards are driven by interest groups and legislators they control, resulting in a stricter approach. This book shows that both approaches can be effective but work through different causal mechanisms. To test his argument, Postnikov draws on original data collected in Brussels, Washington, Santiago, Bogota, and Seoul. This book will be of interest to all scholars and students working in the fields of international political economy and EU and US trade policy.
For the first time, this book provides an up-to-date history of product design and product design law covering 17 countries — Japan, Korea, China, Singapore, the United Kingdom, Germany, France, Italy, the Nordic countries (Denmark, Finland, Iceland, Norway and Sweden), Russia, the United States, Brazil and Australia — selected for their innovative or influential approach to design or design protection. Each country is the subject of two chapters — one on the history of design and the other on the history of design law — authored by experts in design and intellectual property (IP) law. This unique interdisciplinary approach explains why and how various national design protection systems (that can include design, copyright, trade mark, competition and civil laws) developed, making it an ideal book for students, researchers and lawyers. The book also serves as an international survey of different national policy and legal responses to historical developments and specific design and legal issues allowing readers to consider their advantages and disadvantages — and so is also recommended for policy and law makers, as well as organizations that administer IP rights. Topics include the subject matter of design protection; procedural and substantive requirements; design registration; infringement; and the overlap of design rights and other IP rights. The chapters on design history provide further context to the historical development of these legal concepts by considering major design movements, key designers and iconic designs and the current state of design. The chapters highlight the connected and often complementary relationship between the two histories, not only for each country, but at the regional and international level, often as a result of government policies, trade, colonialism, immigration and globalisation. Design and design practice continue to become more global and evolve with developments in technology. At the same time, design laws are not internationally harmonized and continue to develop at the national level, with a number of significant changes occurring in recent years. This timely book shows how the lessons of the past continue to inform the future direction of design and the legal systems developed to protect it.
This book provides a comprehensive assessment of the current legal landscape of global design law. It includes practice-based and analytical accounts of national design laws from several representative jurisdictions and delves into the practical and theoretical dimensions of some of the most urgent procedural issues facing this legal field.
Written by expert scholars and practitioners, this unique Research Handbook presents the state of the art in research on, and the practice of, international design law. Combining cutting-edge research with a practical approach, it examines key trends and covers key cases, regional and national laws, as well as concepts of international design protection. In particular, the U.S. framework is compared with the regime of the EU, and issues relating to the Hague Agreement are also covered.
This book employs scholarly analysis to ground practical tools for applying the EU Trade Mark law (EUTM) functionality refusal grounds to address business needs when registering trade marks consisting of product characteristics. The study comprehensively examines the absolute grounds for a refusal of registration of functional signs under EUTM. It interprets the functionality refusal grounds through objective tests, focusing on the pro-competition rationale of denying trade mark exclusivity on product features that are technically or aesthetically important for competitors’ ability to trade in alternative products. The work takes a comparative approach looking at the US trade dress functionality doctrine, and a law and economics perspective on the role of trade marks and brands in the marketplace. It explores how competition rules related to market definition and the substitutability of products, as well as marketing and design findings related to branding and aesthetics, could be integrated into the legal assessment of EUTM functionality. The volume will be of interest to academics and researchers working in the areas of Intellectual Property Law, Trade Mark and Design Law, EU Law, Comparative Law, and Branding.
Artificial intelligence (AI) now infiltrates our culture. After a couple of difficult winters, AI today is a word on everybody’s lips, and it attracts everyone’s attention regardless of whether they are experts or not. From Apple’s Siri to Amazon’s Alexa, Tesla’s auto-driving cars to facial recognition systems in CCTV cameras, Netflix’s film offering services to Google’s search engine, we live in a world of AI goods. The advent of AI-powered technologies increasingly affects people’s lives across the globe. As a tool for productivity and cost-efficiency, AI also shapes our economy and welfare. AI-generated designs and works are becoming more popular. Today, AI technologies can generate several intellectual creations. Fashion is one of the industries that AI can profoundly impact. AI tools and devices are currently being used in the fashion industry to create fashion models, fabric and jewellery designs, and clothing. When we talk about AI-generated designs, we instead focus on the fruits of innovation – more best-selling apparels, more fashionable designs and more fulfilment of customer expectations – without paying heed to who the designer is. Designers invest a lot of talent, time and finances into designing and creating each article of clothing and accessory before they release their work to the public. Pattern drafting is the first and most important step in dressmaking. Designers typically start with a general sketch on paper; add styles, elements and colours; revise and refine everything; and finally deliver their design to dressmakers. AI accelerates this time-consuming and labour-intensive process. Yet the full legal consequences of AI in fashion industry are often forgotten. An AI device’s ability to generate fashion designs raises the question of who will own intellectual property rights over the fashion designs. Will it be the fashion designer who hires or contracts with the AI programmer? Will it be the programmer? Will it be the AI itself? Or will it be a joint work of humans and computers? And who will be liable for infringement deriving from use of third-party material in AI-generated fashion designs? This book explores answers to these questions within the framework of EU design and copyright laws. It also crafts a solution proposal based on a three-step test and model norms, which could be used to unleash the authors, rights holders and infringers around AI-generated fashion designs.
This book offers an overall review, applying systems engineering and architecture approaches, of the design, optimization, operation and results of leading fusion experiments. These approaches provide a unified means of evaluating reactor design. Methodologies are developed for more coherent construction or evaluation of fusion devices, associated experiments and operating procedures. The main focus is on tokamaks, with almost all machines and their important results being integrated into a systems design space. Case studies focus on DIII-D, TCV, JET, WEST, the fusion reactor prototype ITER and the EU DEMO concept. Stellarator, Mirror and Laser inertial confinement experiments are similarly analysed, including reactor implications of breakeven at NIF. The book examines the engineering and physics design and optimization process for each machine, analysing their performance and major results achieved, thus establishing a basis for the improvement of future machines. The reader will gain a broad historical and up-to-date perspective of the status of nuclear fusion research from both an engineering and physics point of view. Explanations are given of the computational tools needed to design and operate successful experiments and reactor-relevant machines. This book is aimed at both graduate students and practitioners of nuclear fusion science and engineering, as well as those specializing in other fields demanding large and integrated experimental equipment. Systems engineers will obtain valuable insights into fusion applications. References are given to associated complex mathematical derivations, which are beyond the scope of this book. The general reader interested in nuclear fusion will find here an accessible summary of the current state of nuclear fusion.
This collection sets a new agenda for conducting research on the EU and learns from past mistakes. In doing so it provides a state-of-the-art examination of social science research designs in EU studies while providing innovative guidelines for the advancement of more inclusive and empirically sensitive research designs in EU studies
This volume provides the most comprehensive contemporary academic writing on Ukrainian competition and intellectual property law in English. Especially over the last few years, these areas have been in considerable flux, a main driver being the EU–Ukraine Association Agreement. The chapters cover a broad range of different topics and share a forward-looking perspective. They also outline the basic background that is necessary to understand the context of the issue discussed, especially with regards to the legal system of Ukraine. The publication is the result of a two-year project, and it is addressed to a wide range of international scholars, practitioners, and policy makers. It aims to make the state-of-the-art in Ukrainian legal scholarship visible and accessible to the international research community and to stimulate global debates in academia and politics. Therefore, it may be of interest and use to anyone who is interested in competition and intellectual property law, and/or in Ukraine.
