The Journal of the Patent and Trademark Society is pleased to announce the electronic publication of Dr. Toshiko Takenaka's review of Research Handbook on Design Law (edited by Henning Hartwig Edward Elgar).

 

Although recent US case law significantly increased the value of design patents, the European industry has long acknowledged the commercial value of product designs and developed EU-wide protection for the designs regardless of registration. According to recent statistics, both US and EU design patents and community design rights outperform utility patents on validity and infringement. The result of the community design rights is particularly surprising because both registered and unregistered design rights issue without any examination of substantive requirements. Effective product design protection is a key to success for consumer goods manufacturers to complete in the global market. However, there have been only a few books to examine design protection by different types of intellectual property rights in multiple jurisdictions. The Research Handbook on Design Law addresses the need by collecting comparative studies of product designs authored by the world’s leading practitioners and scholars. The book mainly focuses on the EU and the US, but various chapters cover the major jurisdictions including Japan, China, Australia, Brazil, South Africa, and Turkey. Topics are carefully selected by Dr. Henning Hartwig, a leading design law practitioner involved in the landmark decisions of the Court of Justice for European Union (CJEU), based on his extensive experience in litigating community and German design rights and other related rights for both German and US clients. Overall, it bridges academic theories and a practice strategy for procuring and enforcing multiple IP rights on product designs in the global market.

 

Read the full review here!