Book Review: The EU Design Approach A Global Appraisal

Designs are a complex bundle of rights. This complexity coupled with a slightly confusing name has led to less understanding and public awareness than many of the other intellectual property rights which vie for attention.

The EU Design Approach (edited by Annette Kur, Marianne Levin and Jens Schovsbo) considers the background to and history of designs through to considering designs in a global context including the impact of new technologies such as 3D printing.

It looks in particular at the attitude toward EU designs taken by the USA and China and considers complicated questions such as spare parts and the overlap with copyright, trade mark and unfair competition law.

The book targets an academic rather than a practitioner audience and may be a bit too theoretical for many (particularly those who don't work with designs on a day to day basis).

The publishers say:

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?

Disclaimer: Edward Elgar Publishing is publishing my book European Fashion Law in February 2019. As is the norm, I was sent a copy to review free of charge.

The stats

Extent: 296 pp
Hardback Price: £85.50
Publication Date: 2018
ISBN: 978 1 78536 413 6
Rupture factor: super low