The EU’s ‘Design Approach’ represented a unique attempt to protect industrial design and designers in and on their own terms. It has now been in place for more than a decade and this book, including contributions from leading international scholars, takes stock and attempts to find out what became of the Design Approach: Is it still observed; what has it achieved; how does it interact with other areas of the law; what became of the spare parts problem and how did the world respond to it?

Written by expert scholars and practitioners, this unique Research Handbook presents the state of the art in research on, and the practice of, international design law. Combining cutting edge research with a practical approach, it examines key trends and covers key cases, regional and national laws, as well as concepts of international design protection. In particular, the U.S. framework is compared with the regime of the EU, and issues relating to the Hague Agreement are also covered. Split across five thematic parts, this Research Handbook examines the foundations of, and methodological perspectives on, design law, the establishment and enforcement of protection, as well as many other critical issues, addressed from a transnational and comparative approach. Chapters consider protection of three-dimensional trademarks, graphical user interfaces, spare parts, protection of designs on the basis of use, priority issues under the Community design scheme, and cross-border copyright protection in Europe. Clear and accessible, the Research Handbook on Design Law will be of value to emerging and established scholars and students of international design law, while also being a key resource for practitioners and policy makers seeking to react and adapt to the rapid emergence of global developments.

This book employs scholarly analysis to ground practical tools for applying the EU Trade Mark law (EUTM) functionality refusal grounds to address business needs when registering trade marks consisting of product characteristics. The study comprehensively examines the absolute grounds for a refusal of registration of functional signs under EUTM. It interprets the functionality refusal grounds through objective tests, focusing on the pro-competition rationale of denying trade mark exclusivity on product features that are technically or aesthetically important for competitors’ ability to trade in alternative products. The work takes a comparative approach looking at the US trade dress functionality doctrine, and a law and economics perspective on the role of trade marks and brands in the marketplace. It explores how competition rules related to market definition and the substitutability of products, as well as marketing and design findings related to branding and aesthetics, could be integrated into the legal assessment of EUTM functionality. The volume will be of interest to academics and researchers working in the areas of Intellectual Property Law, Trade Mark and Design Law, EU Law, Comparative Law, and Branding.

This book examines the causes and consequences of social standards in US and EU preferential trade agreements (PTAs). PTAs are the new reality of the global trading system. Pursued by both developed and developing countries, they increasingly incorporate labor and environmental issues to prevent a race to the bottom in social regulation and counter-protectionism. Using principal-agent theory to explore why US PTAs have stricter social standards than those signed by the EU, Postnikov argues that the level of institutional insulation of trade policy executives from interest groups and legislators determines the design of social standards. In the EU, where institutional insulation is high, social standards mirror the normative preferences of the European Commission leading to a softer approach. In the US, where such insulation is low, social standards are driven by interest groups and legislators they control, resulting in a stricter approach. This book shows that both approaches can be effective but work through different causal mechanisms. To test his argument, Postnikov draws on original data collected in Brussels, Washington, Santiago, Bogota, and Seoul. This book will be of interest to all scholars and students working in the fields of international political economy and EU and US trade policy.

This book explores energy consumption and thermal comfort in the social housing sector in the Eastern Mediterranean basin. This book presents a novel methodological framework for the optimisation of post-war social housing developments in the Eastern Mediterranean climate. The authors draw on semi-structured interviews to present evidence on in situ thermal sensation and provide the results of walk-through and walk-in thermographic surveys to highlight building-fabric performance and highlight anomalies in the building envelopes. The authors go on to show how this data-informed retrofit design solution can be applied to reduce household energy consumption, increase awareness of domestic energy use and inform effective policymaking decisions in energy use in the Eastern Mediterranean basin, including the development of Energy Performance Certificate schemes. This book will be of great interest to students and scholars of energy policy, energy efficiency and planning. It will also assist architects, building engineers and other practitioners in closing the gap between the current understanding and the actual performance of existing residential building stocks in the Eastern Mediterranean basin.

Through an assessment of the originality requirement, this work guides the reader in interpreting judicial decisions which are of fundamental importance to current and future understanding of EU copyright. The book�s holistic approach and methodology t