Artificial by Nature: Plastic Flowers as Intangible Properties

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Abstract

In March 1961, the refusal of entry of a ‘Sweetheart Roses’ consignment into the United States began a series of interesting controversies concerning the copyright in plastic roses, geraniums, lilacs, and flower corsages. Although the history of these cases remains largely unexplored, this paper shows how significant they were in addressing the unstable distinction between the natural and the artificial, particularly when the subsistence of copyright was at stake. Artificial flowers simulated nature, but they did so in ways that forced copyright to construct its subject matter differently. The irony implicit here resulted in the law looking at flower construction as an artifice but trying to legitimate it by grounding the question of originality in the way nature itself was approached.

About the speaker

Dr Jose Bellido
Reader in Law, Kent Law School, University of Kent

Jose Bellido is Reader in Law at the University of Kent and studies the history of intellectual property in the late nineteenth and the twentieth century, especially in Britain. He is the editor/author of several publications including Landmark Cases in Intellectual Property, Hart/Bloomsbury Press, 2017 and Adventures in Childhood. Intellectual Property, Imagination and the Business of Play, forthcoming CUP, 2021 (with Kathy Bowrey).