Origins
The idea of establishing a research body concerned with intellectual property law started to take shape in the late ‘70s. It was around this time that Hugh Brett, a practising solicitor, who had failed to persuade his previous employers that copyright, patents and trade marks were important business legal rights, decided to establish a journal dedicated to intellectual property law. It was to be called the European Intellectual Property Review (EIPR).
Major publishers were unwilling to accept that intellectual property was an important and growing legal subject, so the journal was first published from Hugh’s bedroom. However, the number of lawyers who subscribed to the EIPR soon proved the sceptics wrong. There had now become recognition among practising lawyers that IP rights were not the sole preserve of patent attorneys, trade mark agents and a few specialised lawyers. One copyright textbook had, for example, stated that specialised IP lawyers could be counted “on the fingers of one hand”.
Interest in the subject was growing, fuelled by the UK’s entry into the Common Market. Many early cases in the ECJ were IP cases. The European Commission identified early that if there were to be a true Common Market then harmonised IP laws throughout the Market would be necessary. Attention was starting to focus particularly on the common law aspects of IP harmonisation, since it was perceived that the development of an IP regime across Europe was being dominated by civil law thinking emanating from the Max Planck Institute in Munich (under the energetic direction of Prof. Frederick Beier and Prof. Eugen Ulmer). Ironically, it was at the Max Planck Institute in Munich, in 1980, during a conference of the British/German Jurists Association (organised by Jack Black and Prof. Ulmer) at the Max Planck Institute, that the idea to form a UK institute finally materialised. Michael Flint, a senior partner at Denton Hall, Hugh Laddie and Robin Jacob (leading barristers at the time) Professor Bill Cornish, Professor Gerald Dworkin, Bryan Harris and Hugh Brett were among those who had gathered to discuss comparative copyright / authors’ rights. During the conference, a group from the UK delegation chatted in the gardens nearby. They were appalled that there was no institute to compare with Max Planck in the common law countries, and concerned at the lack of a common law voice in the corridors of Brussels. They resolved to take action to establish what would be called the Common Law Institute of Intellectual Property (CLIP).
Read more about this topic: Intellectual Property Institute
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