The IPKat Team was extremely saddened to be informed of the passing of Professor William (Bill) Cornish.
The co-founder of our blog, Professor Jeremy Phillips, remembers him as follows:
In memoriam: William (Bill) Cornish (1937 - 2022)
by Jeremy Phillips
I first encountered Bill Cornish in 1974 when, as a raw intellectual property doctoral student, I travelled up from Canterbury to discuss my chosen topic and seek his advice. In the 1970s, people who taught IP were almost as rare as those who studied it. We must have been a little wary of one another, since we scarcely spoke about the subject at all -- me because, as a neophyte, I was unwilling to display my ignorance of it and Bill because, as I was later to discover, had so much to talk about that interested him more than straight IP. But what I did find out, in that first meeting, was how many important people he knew and how well he had assessed their usefulness to me in my chosen subject.
It was more than a decade later, in 1985, that I next encountered Bill. He was then about to succeed the legendary Professor Friedrich-Karl Beier as President of ATRIP, the Association for Advancement of Teaching and Research in Intellectual Property. It turned out that I had made sufficient of an impression for him to summon me from the wilds of Queen Mary College's Mile End Campus in order to act as Secretary to ATRIP during his term of office. It was during Bill's two-year presidency that I got to know him much better. I can testify that he was a pleasure to work with. His instructions to me were always brief, relevant and unambiguous. To be honest, he didn't really need a secretariat. I often found that, by the time I came to carry out his orders, he had already performed to perfection the administrative chores with which he had tasked me.
ATRIP conferences displayed Bill at his best. Here he could share his deep understanding of IP with colleagues from around the world. A good and diplomatic listener, he gave his ear to all who sought it. Quiet and serious by nature, he was always on duty, though we all enjoyed watching him let his hair down at venues where a piano might be found; he would play though a series of exquisitely executed pieces with a verve and panache that stood in stark contrast with the solemnity of his set-piece speeches.
Curiously, Bill and I found it very difficult to discuss IP with one another because our approaches were so different. Bill made no secret of the fact that his first love was legal history, and his deployment of historical methodology was frequently apparent when he explained the evolution of legal principles from their earliest beginnings to contemporary times. My first love was the art of IP problem-solving and, while Bill was no slouch in that department, I suspect that he found it a little too trivial for his deeper thinking processes.
To end on a historical note, for very many of us the world began in 0 BC ("Before Cornish"). Before Bill, there was no-one and, before his great and magisterial book, there was nothing. Bill, we are in your debt. We shall miss you.
In memoriam: William (Bill) Cornish (1937 - 2022)
Reviewed by Eleonora Rosati
on
Sunday, January 09, 2022
Rating:
Reviewed by Eleonora Rosati
on
Sunday, January 09, 2022
Rating:
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I owe so much to my friend Bill Cornish. We met in November 1963 when he was an assistant lecturer at the LSE given the job of teaching the evening students. I started the course a bit late (I was doing the Bar exams too). He was teaching us contract law - the first topic I still remember - how precise must a contractual term be - see Hillas v Arcos - to sell at a reasonable price (cf FRAND). Bill taught my class for 3 of the four years of the course - he taught me Industrial Relations one year and Trusts another. Neither of us knew anything about IP. In the last year (1967) he was doing a pupillage in Francis Taylor Building (now 8 New Square) with Blanco. I pupilled there the next. Bill was the first to start teaching an IP course at any UK university - 1967. I helped out with a few lectures in the next few years - he was in part based at Max Planck from about 1969. I would have done much less without him. I am so, so sad.
ReplyDeleteRobin Jacob
Robin Jacob
So sorry to read of Professor Bill Cornish's death. My first encounter with IP Law was at Queen Mary (PGDip, 1989). My teachers included Professor Jeremy Phillips. We used the pale pink, blue and green paperback 'samizdat' early editions of Cornish's 'great and magisterial book'.
ReplyDeleteI learned IP in the 1980's, which was the last decade that one could be an IP autodidact. It was possible only because of Bill Cornish's book, which l devoured and devoured again and again and .... I was not alone. Before there was distance learning, there was the Cornish book, which reached many of us in far flung locales, wherever. My IP adventure has been due in no small part to Bill's erudition and exposition. May his memory be blessed.
ReplyDeleteSo very sad to read this. Bill taught me IP at LSE in 1980. His indeed truly 'magisterial book' was released during the course. That book was I think the first to deal with all the causes of action that now comprise intellectual property in a single volume anywhere in the Anglo Commonwealth (not sure if anybody did in earlier in Europe or the US). There was no wasted verbiage and an immediate grasp of the big issues such as the tendency in IP to proliferate detail like tax law, on recurrent themes. He brought his legal history background to bear in a decisive manner. He visited a few times at the University of Hong Kong. He'd often borrow my bike and and cycle to the Hilton for tea, a very dangerous enterprise, handing the bike to the Majordomo. As far as I know he continued residence in the UK on his Australian passport and was a member of the Royal Academy. Condolences to his wonderful wife Lovedy and his children.
ReplyDelete