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Lookup NU author(s): Professor David Higgins
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License (CC BY-NC-ND).
In this paper we explore a specific facet of the relationship between trade marks and the criminal law in the UK in early twentieth century. Fusing insights from legal, business and economic history, we show how, in the inter-war years of the twentieth century, the context of domestic politics and wider international trade policy resulted in a greater focus on the relationship between trade marks and market-place understandings of the national manufacturing origin of products. This context resulted, amongst other things, in the passage of the Merchandise Marks Act 1926: a criminal law measure that stipulated the circumstances in which imported goods were to be marked with an indication of origin of the place of manufacture/production (either a definite indication of the country of origin, or ‘Empire’ or ‘Foreign’) and included, in section 1, a criminal offence regulating the use of inter alia a trade mark ‘being or purporting to be’ the trade mark of a UK trader. We show that, during the interwar period, the criminal law regulating trade marks became entwined with ‘soft’ trade policy, i.e. a means of protecting the domestic/Empire market falling short of ‘hard’ trade policy (protection/tariffs). The proper role of the criminal law regulating trade marks in international trade policy polarised political debate in the legislature, and also involved major commercial and manufacturing organisations, such as the Federation of British Industry, and various chambers of commerce. Using new archival sources, we show how the meaning of the 1926 Act was actualised through the enforcement of the 1926 Act by the Board of Trade. We explore the problems that confronted the Board of Trade when it enforced the 1926 Act, particularly stemming from the substantial presence of foreign multinationals located in the UK. The 1926 Act did not apply to imported goods that had undergone a ‘substantial change’ through a treatment/process in the UK, and the difficulties in applying this test in practice ultimately led to the demise of Board of Trade prosecutions under the 1926 Act, and a renewed focus, on the part of the Board, on its powers to prosecute ‘false trade descriptions’ contained in earlier legislation: section 2(1) Merchandise Marks Act 1887.
Author(s): Cooper E, Higgins DM
Publication type: Article
Publication status: Published
Journal: Journal of Legal History
Year: 2024
Volume: 45
Issue: 2
Pages: 197-231
Online publication date: 30/06/2024
Acceptance date: 02/04/2018
Date deposited: 26/04/2024
ISSN (print): 0144-0365
ISSN (electronic): 1744-0564
Publisher: Routledge
URL: https://doi.org/10.1080/01440365.2024.2369420
DOI: 10.1080/01440365.2024.2369420
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