Author Archives: Elena Cooper

On 30 October 2017, Dr Elena Cooper presented a paper at a British Art Network conference organised by the Tate: ‘Artists as Reformers in Britain 1850-1914’ held at the Watts Gallery, Surrey. The conference explored how British artists projected their aesthetic authority into social and political fields in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, and included contributions from art historians, researchers and art curators on diverse subjects such as the relation between art and the women’s suffrage movement and the social activism of the painter G.F. Watts (1817-1904). Dr Cooper’s paper uncovered the intense involvement of British painters in the legislative reform of copyright from the 1850s to the codification of copyright in 1911, drawing on the extensive original archival … Continue reading →

Last week, Université Paris Diderot hosted a conference exploring the copyright issues raised by periodicals and newspapers in the nineteenth century. Drawing together scholars working in law and the humanities, the conference involved a shift away from the usual focus of copyright history scholarship on books. The wide-ranging programme, spanning papers on attribution patterns, customs of reprinting and re-use, as well as nineteenth century debates on copyright in news, included a paper by CREATe researcher, Dr Elena Cooper, exploring the interface between nineteenth century copyright rules regulating encyclopedias and periodicals, and the underlying social understandings of those genres. The full programme, which is available here, will lead to a special issue publication in Victorian Periodicals Review. More about the conference, … Continue reading →

CREATe research has explored the public domain in the context of copyright law. However, can cultural works that are in the public domain as a matter of copyright law, be protected as registered trade marks? The European Copyright Society has just published an Opinion on a case that raises this issue. The Drafting Committee for the Opinion included Prof. Lionel Bently (University of Cambridge) and Prof. Estelle Derclaye (University of Nottingham). The case (E-05/16), pending before the EFTA Court (which interprets the Agreement on the European Economic Area, as it applies to European Free Trade Association states), concerns applications filed by the Municipality of Oslo to register as trade marks some 90 visual works and sculptures by the Norwegian artist … Continue reading →

Last weekend, the University of Edinburgh hosted the fifth British Crime Historians Symposium, bringing together a broad range of scholars working on historical perspectives on crime from the disciplines of law, the humanities and the social sciences. This included a presentation by CREATe’s Dr Elena Cooper about intellectual property law and criminalisation. The full paper, to be published in Landmarks on Intellectual Property Law, (Hart Press, 2017) provides original historical insights into the position of intellectual property crime in criminal law frameworks today. The paper is preliminary to Dr Cooper’s new three-year project to commence at CREATe in January 2017, funded by the Leverhulme Trust and mentored by Prof. Lindsay Farmer, exploring the history of the role of the criminal … Continue reading →

On Friday 24 June 2016, to mark the host of the CREATe Festival at RSA House, London, the Royal Society of Arts will be launching a new App, on a trial basis, providing an overview of the history of the Royal Society of Arts and its activities. The App, which will be available for free download by all Festival attendees, includes a section written by Dr Elena Cooper (CREATe, Glasgow University) illustrating the RSA’s important campaign to secure the first copyright legislation protecting painting, drawing and photographs: the Fine Arts Copyright Act 1862. Drawing on Dr Cooper’s extensive research into artistic copyright history to be published in her forthcoming book Art and Modern Copyright: The Contested Image, (Cambridge University Press, … Continue reading →

In March 2015, CREATe hosted a two-day event about copyright history, which included a Symposium entitled What is the Point of Copyright History? The point of departure was the publication of Copyright at Common Law in 1774 by Prof. Tomas Gómez-Arostegui in 2014, in the Connecticut Law Review and as a CREATe Working Paper. A further CREATe Working Paper, edited by the event’s organisers, Dr. Elena Cooper and Prof. Ronan Deazley, has just been published. This provides a lasting record of the Symposium discussions, including an editorial introduction, written comments by the Symposium panellists (Prof. Howard Abrams, Prof. Oren Bracha, Prof. Lionel Bently, Prof. Mark Rose and Prof. Charlotte Waelde) and Prof. Gómez-Arostegui, as well as an edited transcript of … Continue reading →

CREATe Research Fellow Dr Elena Cooper attended a briefing by Shira Perlmutter (Chief Policy Officer, USPTO) organised by the UK Intellectual Property Office. The briefing took place on 7 April, and covered, very usefully, new copyright policy initiatives by the Obama administration. Dr Cooper took notes that have now been reviewed by Ms Perlmutter, and cleared for publication. —- Briefing by Shira Perlmutter, Chief Policy Officer, USPTO delivered at Intellectual Property Office, London at 10am on 7.4.2014 Purpose of Briefing: to outline where USPTO is going with copyright policy in light of a very active year. Focus on Green Paper issued by US Department of Commerce in July 2013: Copyright Policy, Creativity and Innovation in the Digital Economy.