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Phillips, Jeremy --- "The Confusing Case of Mr Smith – Herchel Smith as Litigant" [2007] ELECD 270; in Westkamp, Guido (ed), "Emerging Issues in Intellectual Property" (Edward Elgar Publishing, 2007)

Book Title: Emerging Issues in Intellectual Property

Editor(s): Westkamp, Guido

Publisher: Edward Elgar Publishing

ISBN (hard cover): 9781845427757

Section: Chapter 1

Section Title: The Confusing Case of Mr Smith – Herchel Smith as Litigant

Author(s): Phillips, Jeremy

Number of pages: 11

Extract:

1. The confusing case of Mr Smith ­
Herchel Smith as litigant
Jeremy Phillips
This chapter is dedicated to the memory of a man to whom the intellectual
property community owes a great debt. He was a man of intellect and of
learning, of generosity and of foresight; he was, above all, a man who rose
above the handicap of starting life with an utterly unmemorable surname,
indeed one of the most common surnames in the world. The fact that there
are so many Smiths was only partially mitigated by our subject's unusual
forename Herchel. For, even taking a `global appreciation' of the name, it
was still perfectly possible to confuse it with the names of others. This
author recalls his own confusion when Gerald Dworkin, a gentleman, a
scholar and the second incumbent of the endowed Chair in what was then
Queen Mary and Westfield College, moved to King's College, forsaking the
Regent's Canal for the River Thames and incidentally changing his title from
Herchel Smith Professor to Herbert Smith Professor.


HERCHEL SMITH THE LITIGANT
In addition to being an inventor and a philanthropist, Herchel Smith was also
an intellectual property litigant. Although records in the United Kingdom
reveal no extant record of his having participated in copyright or trade mark
litigation, he made his mark in British patent litigation.
In Roussel-Uclaf's Application1 the United Kingdom Patent Office had
held that a patent application by the French company Roussel-Uclaf had been
partially anticipated by ...