Sex offenders inflict trauma in communities and long-lasting consequences for the victims; therefore, their behaviour was managed, controlled, and prevented. In addition, sex offenders’ crimes invoked strong media coverage and fearful feelings from legislators and the public at large, which often resulted in quick legislative actions. Most current sex offender laws arose from murders of children at the hands of sex offenders (Tewksbury & Mustaine, 2006; Vasquez, Maddan & Walker, 2008). In this situation, emotional arguments rather than rational ones were likely to dominate the policy-making process (Bank, 2004), and laws to control sex offenders were enacted.
reation of design law was to incentivize innovation . A number of statues enacted in the early 19th century intended to grant property right to mental labour, it is one of the most distinctive characteristics of modern intellectual property law. Calico Printer’s Act of 1787 is the first statue conferring explicit legal protection to design, as to encourage the arts of textile design and printing. Section 1 of the Calico Printer’s Act of 1787, provided every person ‘who shall invent, design, and print… any new and original Pattern or Patterns… for printing Linens, Cottons, Calicos, or Muslins’ with the right to produce the same design for the term of two months. Legal measures were adopted to induce a better legal environment, giving designers and innovator confidences to bring out more good designs, knowing that their IP right to the products are sufficiently protected. Kusamitsu explains that the scope of design protection can be varied in law to align with the social economic changes .
The determination to protect design right in the pre-modern IP law was the particular response to the industrial revolution. At the time of the revolution, the appearances of the British goods were deemed not as appealing as those produced else where, the one great rival was France. To tackle such divergence in trade, attentions were given not only to the implementation of new public policies, but also to the improvement of the legal regime. These public policy including the establishment of design schools to improve skills of UK designers, and the opening of a museum to improve standard taste of design. Unarguably, the old design law was not flawless. Bently and Sherman criticised the scope of protection in pre-modern IP law being too ‘subject specific’ and ‘reactive in nature’, leaving the scope of design protection in times unrealistically hard to control. The law was being too focused on individual rights, property rights were granted to ‘everyone who shall invent, design and print’ . O’Brien adds that the protections lay rather in the labour and production costs of the design , which is another characteristic of the old design law. Being compared to the pre-modern law, Bently and Sherman describe the modern IP law as being more ‘forward looking’. Such description could be contentious in the context of the current judicial development, it is questionable whether the fundamental purpose or values of design law (to incentivise innovation) is being forgotten or degraded.
In the modern society, mental labour are highly valued, design form the largest contribution to overall intangible investment in the UK economy, contributing over 1.5 per cent of Gross Domestic Product (GDP) . Hargreaves has warned the government about the economic importance of UK designs, suggesting a stronger legal protection is required to enable the design industry to grow at a healthy rate. The main argument that emerges from Magmatic is whether the ruling has failed to protect British innovator. Dids Macdonald, the CEO of Anti Copying In Design, describe the Magmatic judgement as ‘a sad day of design’ and a distortion ‘plunging design law into an abyss’ . Ashby argued that the Supreme Court has missed the opportunity to seek guidance from the CJEU for the proper interpretation regarding the
