What Is So Special (to Me) About Intellectual Property?

gone-with-the-wind-11Last week I announced a future post about “why I like IP” and what brought me to specialize in this area. First, as with many-and often the most successful-things in life, IP more or less happened to me. I graduated from the University of Bologna Law School with a thesis (very much like a master’s thesis) in Antitrust Law. During my time at Berkeley and while attending my Doctorate Program I still worked on Advertising and Antitrust Law, increasingly, however, focusing on the relationship between Antitrust and Intellectual Property. As I mentioned before, my mentor and guide of my whole career, professor Vito Mangini, played a vital role in “pushing” me further and further into the IP world. In fact, IP in general, and trademarks in particular, became my main focus of both writing and practicing when, following the suggestion of my professor (who also found scholarships to support my stay and study) I moved to London to attend the Queen Mary and Westfield College and the London School of Economics. Since then, my love for IP has just grown, and I have never thought of a better field of law in which to practice, teach, and write.

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Berlusconi in the United States

_45915796_obama_berlusconi_ap466I am an Italian citizen (and very proud of it), so I read the Italian news every day.  This is not really “legally relevant,” but  the BBC has a very funny article on the current Italian Prime Minister, Silvio Belusconi, visiting President Obama: “Oh no, Silvio! Will Italian PM avoid offending anyone on US visit?”  So far, Silvio Berlusconi has embarrassed the whole country multiple times with his gaffes (more or less intentional), such as the now-famous description of President Obama as “young, handsome, and sun tanned.”  Still, maybe Berlusconi will spare us this time.

To quote part of the article,

Beppe Severgnini, columnist for Corriere della Sera and author of La Bella Figura – A Field Guide to the Italian Mind, thinks the risk of a PR disaster in Washington is low. He points out that Mr. Berlusconi does not speak English, Mr. Obama does not speak Italian, and they will only meet for one hour to discuss preparations for the G8 summit, which Italy is hosting next month.

And, as Mr. Palandri, a professor at University College London,  puts it, “Even if he does badly he won’t be in an embarrassing position — because we could not be in a more embarrassing position than we are now.” 

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Why Intellectual Property is Often (Literally) the “Icing on the Cake”

barbie-cakeI often tell my students that Intellectual Property is like the “icing on the cake”—the “cake” being the structure created by a product or service to which Intellectual Property law (IP) applies.  As I will elaborate in a future post, this is one of the reasons why I like IP so much.  In other words, while the technical application of IP is undoubtedly complicated and challenging, IP is often just the last step of a production or creation process.  It is like the icing on a cake — that final layer that ties everything together.  Yet this layer is absolutely necessary to complete the work and often represents the sine qua non of why the public will buy the cake.  It determines whether a product will be successful or not.  This post, however, is not about IP theory . . . it is really about cakes, icing, and IP.

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