Stina Teilmann-Lock

Associate Professor of Design Studies
University of Southern Denmark

Stina Teilmann-Lock is Associate Professor of Design Studies at the University of Southern Denmark. She has worked as a patent manager, has been a Carlsberg Research Fellow at the Danish Design School and a Post-Doctoral Fellow at the Centre for Information and Innovation Law at the University of Copenhagen. She has published widely on copyright, art, and design. Stina’s new book The Object of Copyright: a Conceptual History of Originals and Copies in Literature, Art and Design (Routledge) will be published in August 2015.

Abstract

The PH Lamp: an IP biography of a Danish design Icon

Article 2 of the Berne Convention for the Protection of Literary and Artistic Work sets out to identify and define all possible classes of works to be protected, listing applied art as one of them. However, sub-section 2(7) provides that 'it shall be a matter for legislation in the countries of the Union to determine the extent of the application of their laws to works of applied art and industrial designs and models, as well as the conditions under which such works, designs and models shall be protected.' For a country to be a member of the Berne Union it has to satisfy a number of minimum standards for the protection of literary and artistic works. However in relation to works of design (or: 'applied art') member countries are free to chose their own approach to IP protection. This 'freedom' reflects a historical disagreement between member countries. It also reflects the contrasting conceptions, from the technical to the aesthetic, which are characteristic of modern design.

This talk considers a survey of intellectual property (IP) protection of design in the twentieth century as seen through the case of the Danish PH lamp: this is an object of protection under diverse branches of IP law. The 'IP biography' of the PH lamp is illustrative of the unstable status of design in intellectual property law, and of its vulnerability to divergent national laws. Thus the PH lamp has been protected under patent law as well as under copyright law, rendering it at the same time both a type of 'industrial property' and a type of 'artistic property.' A dossier of legal materials, including litigation and registrations, relative to the PH lamp will be considered in the context of the double or inconsistent conceptualization of design.