A User's Guide to Design Law

Newly published by Bloomsbury Professional is A User's Guide to Design Law, by Clive Thorne and Simon Bennett. Described as an "easily accessible guide to protecting industrial designs", the text guides the reader through the legislation and case law, explaining the different (and, to most laymen and normal sane businessmen, incomprehensible and arbitrary) protection mechanisms available under design and copyright law, as well as the enforcement options available to those whose rights appear to have been infringed. The easy access is provided by the thoughtful deployment of paper pages, which may be turned singly or in quantity and which are furnished with helpful little things like numbers and running heads. No electronic version is yet available, though I very much hope and believe that the second edition will fit into an e-book.

The text, which is current to February 2010 (well done, getting the book out so quickly!), is certainly clear and easy to read. Its pedigree is that of the same publisher's much-beloved User's Guide to Copyright (here), in which co-author Clive Thorne has a hand, and it shares much of that work's usefulness. Illustrations support the text, as one really requires for a book on design law. Laudably, the publishers let you sample Chapter 2 (UK unregistered design right) here, so you can get the flavour of it.

This book confines its focus to the UK and Europe. From the point of view of the reader as litigant, this makes sense. However, the reader as design applicant might have benefited from a chapter, however, short, that points him in the direction of international designs and all those Hague-y things that lurk beyond the UK's borders (after all, the European Union is a member). Also, some reference to licensing other than in the context of licences of right might also assist the reader.

Now for a warning for prospective purchasers and a reprimand for the publisher. Only the first 90 pages of this book consist of text. The next nearly 300 pages consist of appendices: IPO and OHIM forms and all the usual domestic and European legislation, of which I seem to have a large number of copies already. There is nothing on the website or on the book's outer extremities to indicate that purchasers are paying to buy 300 pages of material that they can download or access at no cost from the internet.

Bibliographic data. ISBN: 978 1 84766 305 4. Paperback, xx + 387 pages. Price £82. Web page here.