§ 22.
This clause will effect a subs/tantial alteration in the law in so far as designs in the nature of drawings are con- cerned. Alteration of the law. At present, in addition to the exclusive right the under the Patents and Designs Act, 1907, of applying the design to articles of manufacture, the author has, for the full term of life and seven years under the Fine Arts Copyright Act, 1862, the right to prevent any one from reproducing the design in pictorial form in the flat. As the effect of the general provisions of the Act is to give the author of a drawing the exclusive right to reproduce the artistic design thereof in any material form whatsoever, it is clear that if some limitation was not introduced, the authors of all industrial designs would, in effect, acquire an absolute monopoly in their designs for life and fifty years. The object of the clause is to avoid this result, and to leave designs (used or intended to be used as patterns to Ide multiplied by any industrial process) under the short term of protection now given by the Patents and Designs Act, 1907.
Definition of "desisgn." "Design" is defined by sect. 93 of the Patents and Designs Act, 1907, as meaning "any design (not being a design for a sculpture or other thing within the protection of the Sculpture Copyight Act, 1814) applicable to any article, whether the design is applicable for the pattern, or for the shape or configuration, or for the ornament thereof, or for any two or more of such purposes, and by whatever means it is applicable, whether by printing, painting, embroidering, weaving, sewing, modelling, casting, embossing, engraving, staining, or any other means whatever, manual, mechanical, or chemical, separate or combined "[1].
Christmas cards and advertising posters.
The application of this section to Christmas cards and advertising jDosters raises questions of some difficulty. In either case there is usually a combination of words and pictures blended together to form a picturesque whole. The real question appears to be whether the design so produced is "applicable to any article for the pattern, or for the shape or configuration, or for the ornament thereof." In most cases a design for a Christmas card may be deemed to be so applicable[2]: but in the case