Universität Wien, Juridicum, Elisabeth Holzleithner und Milos Vec
Zeit: Do, 14.01.2016, 14:00 Uhr
Ort: Juridicum, Sem 62
This project reveals the power of gender and sexuality norms in the deep discourse of pivotal American case law on design patents.
Charles Colman will examine influential design-patent decisions from the 1870s through the 1930s against this cultural backdrop. His close reading of these decisions will demonstrate that federal judges, particularly in leading cases decided by the Second Circuit, increasingly used design-patent disputes as a vehicle for the performance and endorsement of prevailing gender norms. The resulting doctrine relegated design patents to near-total irrelevance as a viable form of intellectual property protection for a large and crucial portion of the Twentieth Century.
In a forthcoming monograph, „Patents and Perverts: The Hidden Moral Agenda of American Design Law“ (Cambridge University Press 2016), Charles Colman will examine doctrinal distortions in U.S. copyright and trademark law that resulted from the judiciary’s marginalization of design patents. Some of these distortions, including the perpetually problematic doctrines of „conceptual separability“ and „aesthetic functionality,“ persist to this day — even as an array of jurisprudential, social, and economic factors have facilitated the reemergence of design patents as a viable form of IP protection.

Charles Colman ist Acting Assistant Professor of Lawyering an der New York School of Law mit den Schwerpunkten Contemporary Dress, Copyright Law, Design History, Gender and Sexuality, Patent Law, Property Law, Trademark Law (Web).