Behind the Scenes:
MAX WILLIAMS
A près
THE
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The Fake Edition
FORECAST
P lanet
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Yesterday’s News Tomorrow
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FAKE FURNITURE FURY! CROSSWORD
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COMMENTS
STAND UP!
STAND UP!
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P3 BEAUTY
I hate being a prima donna, but
these fake furnishings
make you look stupid!
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Image: Twitter
By Wessel Stoltz
As Tony Ash, the managing director of Vitra (in the UK, USA, India,
Middle East and Far East), put it,
“the problem is a simple one [...].
In France, as in the rest of the EU,
furniture designs are protected for
70 years plus the life of the author.
So, in the case of Ray Eames, who
passed away in 1988, her designs
are protected in EU countries until
2058. However, travel 22 miles over
the channel to the UK and Ray’s designs are protected for just 25 years.
Thus the 1956 Eames Lounge Chair
ran out of IP protection in 1981.”
This, however, is going to change…
in 2020.
The UK’s intellectual property minister, Lucy Neville-Rolfe, declared
in a document that the government
has had a caucus with some of the
big furniture manufacturers like
Vitra and Skandium and set April
2020 as the deadline for changing
their archaic views on intellectual
property.
signers (and their manufactures) is
that they will be enjoying the same
amount of intellectual property protection that authors and artists have;
their designs are no longer only
protected for 25 years, but rather for
the lifetime of the designer and for
70 years after his or her death.
The subsequent knock-on effect will
mean that cheap, unauthorised imitations (often from China) will stop
flooding the market while consumers are guaranteed quality products
the way the designer designed them.
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LONDON DIARY
APRIL
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Roll on 2020!
SPORT
What this means for furniture de-
BENT IS BEAUTIFUL
DENT OFFICE CHAIR
Only three countries in the whole of
the European Union do not adhere
to the EU Intellectual Property law.
They are: Estonia, Romania and of
course…the United Kingdom.
FEATURES
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