A MANIFESTO ON INDUSTRIAL DESIGN PROTECTION: RESURRECTING THE DESIGN REGISTRATION LEAGUE

摘要

As aptly put in a paper published a decade ago, detailing nearly a century of earnest but unsuccessful attempts to implement industrial design legislation, proponents of copyright-based protection for the useful arts have traveled down "a long and winding road."1 It began in 1914, when a group called the Design Registration League, representing the interests of a range of businesses and manufacturers, went before Congress to propose amending the copyright statute to protect industrial designs, using a registration system.2 Even though Congress generally supported the bill, it ultimately failed.3 But it laid the foundation for subsequent lobbying attempts to pass similar legislation that have traversed the course of the twentieth-century.4