Obiter Dictum

The Archive

Articles

Everything published so far, grouped into collections. Each piece stands entirely on its own; the collections simply reward the reader who follows the thread.

Three pieces on how luxury houses are defending their brand identity across jurisdictions and legal doctrines. Podcast episodes for the Hermès and Louis Vuitton stories are in the edit and arrive soon.

Part One · Louis Vuitton · July 2026

The Cost of a Flower

How Louis Vuitton's flower ended up on a bubble tea cup and what happened when the lawyers noticed.

Read on Substack   Podcast episode coming soon

Part Two · Chanel · July 2026

Someone Else's Buttons

Upcycled luxury, exhausted rights and the line between creative reuse and trademark infringement.

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Part Three · Hermès · July 2026

While Waiting for My Birkin

A parody Birkin, an unamused Hermès and whether making people laugh is a defence in trademark law.

Read on Substack   Podcast episode coming soon

Three pieces on a deceptively simple question: who owns your face, your voice, and the identity behind them?

Part One · June 2026

The Face on the Box

Dua Lipa, a Samsung TV box and the $15 million lawsuit that turned on a single word: yes.

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Part Two · July 2026

The Sound of Yourself

Taylor Swift, trademark law and what happens when you try to register a human voice as a brand.

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Part Three · July 2026

The Smile That Belonged to Someone Else

Deepfakes, personality rights and what happens when your face appears in places you have never been. A synthetic Preity Zinta, 275 links and the Bombay High Court's answer.

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Three standalone articles on what the law says about artificial intelligence, across copyright, patents and data rights.

Part One · May 2026

The Copyright Question

Thaler v Perlmutter, section 9(3) of the CDPA, and the question nobody at work is asking: if you used AI to write that report, who owns it?

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Part Two · May 2026

The Patent Question

Two UK Supreme Court decisions, two years apart, pulling in different directions on what a machine can invent.

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Part Three · May 2026

The Data Question

Getty Images against Stability AI, three jurisdictions at three different stages of resolution, and who controls data once it leaves the hands of the person it belongs to.

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What happens when everyday objects, shapes and symbols end up in a courtroom.

Trade Dress · July 2026

The Colours on the Corner

A corner shop, a sportswear giant and the stripe pattern they both wanted to own.

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Trade Dress · May 2026

Who Owns an Octagon?

How Audemars Piguet lost the legal right to its most famous design, and why a $400 pocket watch might be the smartest thing the brand has ever done about it.

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Dupe Culture · May 2026

Does It Matter If Nobody Is Fooled?

How dupe culture broke the one thing trademark law needs to work, and why the courts are struggling to keep up.

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Trademark · June 2026

Is a Cross Just a Cross?

How a symbol two thousand years old ended up registered as somebody's trademark and what a department store did about it.

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Trade Dress · May 2026

Who Owns the Shape of a Sandwich?

A billion-dollar peanut butter and jelly empire, a Trader Joe's knockoff with suspiciously similar crimped edges, and whether you can trademark a lunchbox staple.

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Trade Dress · May 2026

Can You Own the Shape of a Moisturiser Jar?

How a $48 body cream, a Costco dupe and a federal judge's views on the practicality of roundness produced one of the most consequential trade dress rulings in years.

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Copyright · May 2026

The Real Price of a Valentine's Card

Pop-up greeting cards, three-dimensional paper sculptures, and what a copyright dispute reveals about the cost of making beautiful things.

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AI & Liability · May 2026

Can ChatGPT Tell You What's Wrong?

A bank holiday, an eleven-year-old's phone call, two doctors arguing in a kitchen, and a wrongful death lawsuit that asks what happens when the only second opinion available is a chatbot.

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AI & Liability · June 2026

Who's Liable When the Chatbot Lies?

A grieving passenger, a fabricated refund policy and Air Canada's discovery that its own chatbot was legally binding.

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Two pieces on the machinery of doing business — the public registers, the corporate veils and the distribution structures that quietly govern who owes what to whom.

Commercial Law · August 2026

The Boot Maker's Bargain

Public registers, limited liability and the wonderful career tool that costs nothing and takes less than an hour to use.

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Commercial Law · June 2026

The Shoes That Outgrew the Shop

Selective distribution, surplus stock and what happens when a brand decides it no longer needs you.

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AI & Copyright · July 2026

How Much Does a Copyright Win Cost?

A $1.5 billion settlement priced as a rounding error, a detection tool that cannot reliably detect and what happens when both are announced in the same week.

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Public Law · June 2026

Who Gets to Be a Terrorist?

The Court of Appeal says Palestine Action is nothing like the suffragettes. The suffragettes might disagree.

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