Design Rights : Functionality and Scope of Protection.

Design Rights: Functionality and Scope of Protection addresses the issue of functionality in the context of design rights. Protection of industrial and other designs has developed as a distinct and important area of intellectual property law. This book, while providing a solid foundation of the law regarding the protection and enforcement of design rights, focuses on the ever-present, and always contentious, issue of functionality in the context of design rights. While there is considerable harmonization on the fundamental principle that design rights regard aesthetic appearance and not underlying technical function, courts and legislatures the world over have long struggled with determining whether to permit, and how to interpret the scope of, design rights directed at products whose appearance may, partially or completely, be the result of functional consideration.