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Anne Barron

This course is available on the LLM (extended part-time), LLM (full-time), MSc in Law and Accounting, MSc in Law, Anthropology and Society and University of Pennsylvania Law School LLM Visiting Students. This course is available with permission as an outside option to students on other programmes where regulations permit.

This course will be relevant to the following LLM specialisms: Competition, Innovation and Trade Law, Corporate and/or Commercial Law; Information Technology, Media and Communications Law; Intellectual Property Law.

None

This course situates the key concepts of trade mark law in relation to analyses of brands and branding offered by leading contemporary social scientists. Topics to be covered include: histories of brands, branding and trade marks; connections and disconnections between trade marks and brands; the new salience of non-traditional trade marks; sensory marks and sensory marketing; offensive marks and banned brands; trade marks and 'distinction'; the consumer psychology of trademark law; the role of trademark law in propertising brands; limits to propertisation; and legal implications of ‘alter-branding’ and related phenomena. Throughout, emphasis is placed on the law’s role in underpinning marketing processes that now structure everyday life in ever more intense and intimate ways, and consideration is given to the links between these processes and wider changes in economy and society such as globalisation, financialisation and informationalisation.

20 hours of seminars and 2 hours of help sessions in the LT.

The help session will be designed to support students' summative essay-writing work. All students will be invited to attend this session. Expectations for the essays will be explained, and sample essays discussed. 

One 1500-word essay.

There is no set text: readings will be assigned on a weekly basis. The core reading will include legislative texts and leading cases, but also journal articles and book chapters, and these will range across a number of disciplines including media and communication studies, cultural studies, economic sociology, business studies and anthropology. The following list is indicative: Melissa Aronczyk and Devon Powers, Blowing Up the Brand: Critical Perspectives on Promotional Culture (Peter Lang, 2010); Adam Arvidsson, Brands: Meaning and Value in Media Culture (Routledge, 2006); Lionel Bently and Brad Sherman Intellectual Property Law 4th ed. (OUP, Oxford 2014); Rita Clifton, Brands and Branding (2nd ed.) (Economist Books, 2009); Rosemary Coombe, The Cultural Life of Intellectual Properties (Duke UP, 1998); Graeme Dinwoodie and Mark Janis (eds.), Trade Mark Law and Theory: A Handbook of Contemporary Research​ (Edward Elgar, 2008); Paul du Gay and Michael Pryke, Cultural Economy: Cultural Analysis and Commercial Life (Sage, 2002); Jonathan Gabay, Brand Psychology: Consumer Perceptions, Corporate Reputations (Kogan Page, 2015); Martin Kornberger, Brand Society: How Brands Transform Management and Lifestyle (Cambridge University Press 2010); MPI, Study on the Overall Functioning of the European Trademark System (2011); Naomi Klein, No Logo: Taking Aim at the Brand Bullies (Flamingo, 2000); Celia Lury, Brands: The Logos of the Global Economy (Routledge, 2004); Liz Moor, The Rise of Brands (Berg, 2007); Alexander von Muhlendahl at al., Trade Mark Law in Europe (3rd ed.) (OUP, 2016); Ilanah Simon Fhima, Trade Mark Dilution in Europe and the United States (OUP, 2011).

Essay (100%, 8000 words) in the ST.