With Queen Mary University of London’s Professor Uma Suthersanen, he has co-authored a prize-winning research paper on EU IP law.
By Mr John Stevenson (Senior Communications Officer), Published
Senior Lecturer in The City Law School, Dr Marc Mimler, is the joint winner of an award from the European Communities Trade Mark Association.
He won the award with co-author, Professor Uma Suthersanen, Director of Queen Mary, University of London’s Intellectual Property Research Institute for their paper, An Autonomous EU Functionality Doctrine for Shape Exclusions (2020).
The article was first published in the GRUR International Journal of European and International IP Law (OUP, 2020).
In exploring the recent jurisprudence of the Court of Justice of the European Union, the authors proposed that the EU Court was consciously shifting the rationales of design, copyright and trade-mark laws by aligning the functionality doctrines within these three laws.
The work shows this shift of judicial policy through examining the various doctrinal and policy reasons underpinning the exclusion of ‘shapes’ from these areas of IP law.
They suggest that not only is an EU autonomous functionality doctrine being formed within IP law, but that the Court of Justice is also building a EU macro-rationale for IP based on utilitarian norms namely, market freedom and competition.
ECTA, the European Communities Trade Mark Association, represents over 1500 trade mark practitioners based within the EU. The Awards have been established to strengthen ECTA's links with academics and academic institutions. Prizes are awarded to articles considered to make a significant contribution to the development of intellectual property law, based upon criteria including the depth of research undertaken, breadth and timeliness of the subject matter, quality of writing and originality of ideas.