Chapter 4 Mr Patent Goes to War!

Industrial Property and the Breakdown of the International Order during World War I

In: Intellectual Property and the Law of Nations, 1860-1920
Author:
Phillip Johnson
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Abstract

The end of the nineteenth and early twentieth century saw the birth, and repeated amendments, of the Paris Convention on the protection of industrial property. Yet in the summer of 1914, with the outbreak of the First World War, the international legal order broke down and the founding members of these Conventions took up arms against each other. The attack on the enemy was both material and commercial, which meant that intellectual property laws had to be drastically changed to prevent the ‘enemy’ benefiting from the system. This chapter uses the Peace Treaties of Versailles and Saint Germain to explore the response of the belligerents to the ‘laws of war’ as they applied to enable the suspension of enemy owned patents, designs, and registered trademarks. Ultimately, it is shown that industrial property rights were protected even if the proprietor was not.

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