ABSTRACT
Once the factors outlined above are borne in mind, it is clear that the concept of property is not
only alive,75 but thriving. Take intellectual property as an example. The decision of the House of
Lords in the Designers Guild case76 calls into question the continuing validity of the principle that
copyright extends to ‘expressions and not to ideas’.77 The case concerned infringement of
copyright in the claimant’s fabric designs. The Court of Appeal concluded that the defendant’s
design had not involved the copying of a substantial part of the claimants design as the two designs
did not look sufficiently similar. The House of Lords allowed the claimant’s appeal. Lord Hoffmann
observed that ‘copyright may be infringed by a work which does not reproduce a single sentence
of the original. If one asks what is being protected in such a case, it is difficult to give any answer
except that it is an idea expressed in the copyright work’.78 The Appellate Committee’s decision
may be seen as according greater weight to the view that copyright represents a right to possession
of an idea rather than to the more orthodox line that copyright is a monopoly right over an activity.
