CIPIL Spring Conference: 'Intellectual Property Rights as Allied Rights: Bill Cornish and the Making of Today’s Intellectual Property System'

In 1981, Professor Bill Cornish published the first student textbook on ‘Intellectual Property’. The book was to prove hugely influential, as academic courses on the subject proliferated around the country. In turn, it spawned a host of imitators, all of whom stuck doggedly with the template Cornish had provided (of treating patents, copyright and trade marks together). However, now in its 9th edition, and curated and updated by Professors David Llewelyn and Tanya Aplin, the text has never been surpassed.

One of the most significant aspects of the book was its very categorisation. Entitled ‘Intellectual Property: Patents, Copyright, Trade Marks and Allied Rights’, the textbook presented the distinct legal regimes as ‘allied’ in important respects. Forty years on from the publication of Cornish’s seminal text, ‘intellectual property’ has been cemented as a foundational legal concept. The term is deployed in international treaties, in regional instruments, in national constitutions, in domestic legislation; and is used to denominate governmental and non-governmental organisations, not least the World Intellectual Property Organisation, and the now numerous ‘intellectual property offices’ around the world. In the UK, the notion of ‘intellectual property’ serves to define the field of operation of distinct civil procedure rules, as well as the remedies available to litigators. Moreover, the concept figures in the names, and to define the operational fields of, professorial chairs; institutes (such as CIPIL, which was conceived under Bill’s watch and founded to coincide with Bill’s retirement), journals and scholarly organisations.

Of course, the concept of ‘intellectual property’ has not gone uncriticised, and its usefulness unchallenged. At this conference, we bring together scholars and practitioners, many of whom had a long and first hand relationship with Bill, to consider critically the origin, history, and utility of the notion of “intellectual property”, and more generally of thinking of trade marks, patents and copyright as “allied rights.”

More details can be found on our event page.