The modern law of coprights and designs: Second Edition, by Laddie, Prescott and Victoria, two volumes, 1995, hard-cover, 1472 pp. & 764 pp., £295.00, ISBN, for Volume One: 0406049750, or ISBN, for the complete set: 0406616973
- Publisher
- Elsevier Science
- Year
- 1996
- Tongue
- English
- Weight
- 155 KB
- Volume
- 12
- Category
- Article
- ISSN
- 0267-3649
No coin nor oath required. For personal study only.
✦ Synopsis
The authors begin their preface to this text with an interesting story, indicating that, when they first undertook to write the first edition of this book in 1980, copyright was the'~:inderella subject"of intellectual property law. Their publishers urged a shorter text be produced, since printing was expensive and demand uncertain. The authors were nevertheless urged to identify problems lurking beneath the surface of copyright law and to stick their necks out with prospective analysis. As things turned out, there was a willing market for the resulting book, which sold out and subsequently became unobtainable. The authors indicate that, when this occurred, the work was widely stolen from legal libraries.
There is no such concern from the publishers with this latest text, because it is now produced in two substantive volumes containing well over 2000 pages of analysis and precedent material. This second edition has been almost completely re-written, partly, say the authors, because the law has changed much in the intervening years, but also because it now no longer makes good sense to write a book restricted only to copyright law. This time, the whole subject of industrial designs in its various manifestations has been included. The style of the work maintains the irreverant characteristics that underlined its First Edition. Where criticism of the law is due, the authors give it. They point out, for example, that the present Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988 contains 49 Sections which set forth in"too great a detail what are the exceptions to copyright protection. Some of these regulations will soon be out-of-date and an embarrass-