Dissertation Progress
Aug. 10th, 2008 07:08 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
major_clanger
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5,495 / 10,000 (54.9%) |
Coming along nicely; the 2000 words since Thursday also includes a substantial re-ordering once I realised I was committing a Cart Before Horse error at one point. It's naturally tempting to talk about copyright issues before those arising from design rights, but it turns out to make a lot more sense if you do it the other way around, because of the way the two areas of law interact, especially as regards surface decoration. And this is one of the potential trouble spots, because it turns out that whilst fabbing a mobile phone cover won't infringe design rights, even if you sell it (thanks to so-called 'must-fit' exceptions), configuring your fab to emboss a picture of Mickey Mouse on it will, because that gets copyright protection, irrespective of whether it's done for profit or not.
Tomorrow I think I'll head down to the law library at Middle Temple to dig out some references. Whilst I have several IP law textbooks, including one (Cornish & Llewelyn) that is regarded as pretty authoritative, there is a core of very expensive 'practitioner texts' that are regularly updated and taken even by courts as generally definitive guides to the law. Some I can access online, but not all, and it does me good to get out now and again.
