Trade Marks and Brands

Developments in trade marks law have called into question a variety of basic features, as well as bolder extensions, of legal protection. Other disciplines can help us think about fundamental issues such as: what is a trade mark? What does it do? What should be the scope of its protection? This volume assembles essays examining trade marks and brands from a multiplicity of fields: from business history, marketing, linguistics, legal history, philosophy, sociology and geography. Each chapter pairs lawyers’ and non-lawyers’ perspectives, so that each commentator addresses and critiques his or her counterpart’s analysis. The perspectives of non-legal fields are intended to enrich legal academics’ and practitioners’ reflections about trade marks, and to expose lawyers, judges and policy-makers to ideas, concepts and methods that could prove to be of particular importance in the development of positive law.

Author Biography

Lionel Bently is Herchel Smith Professor of Intellectual Property Law at the University of Cambridge, Director of the Centre of Intellectual Property and Information Law at the University of Cambridge, and a Professorial Fellow at Emmanuel College, Cambridge. Jennifer Davis is Newton Trust Lecturer and College Lecturer at Wolfson College, University of Cambridge. Jane C. Ginsburg is the Morton L. Janklow Professor of Literary and Artistic Property Law at the Columbia Law School. She also directs the law school’s Kernochan Center for Law, Media and the Arts.