Past historic 2: Prince Albert and the etchings

Prince Albert:
consort and litigant

The second item in the little bundle of photocopied articles on IP history which this Kat researched and wrote back in the 1980s, when he was still a full-time academic, deals with the background to a seminal case in English IP history: Prince Albert v Strange (1849), the judicial ruling which provided the basis upon which equitable relief for breach of confidence grew into what has subsequently become a highly-developed and sophisticated body of case law on what is now an equitable tort.

The confidential subject matter in this case was the information concerning a set of etchings which the young Queen Victoria and her artistically-inclined husband Prince Albert had executed over a period of years. In the course of conducting this research this Kat had to gain permission to view the etchings, which are held in Windsor Castle. More revealing than the etchings themselves, or the reasoning of the court, was the fact that investigative and intrusive news reporting was capable of causing annoyance and distress to a journalist's royal quarry in the mid-19th century just as it is today.

The article, "Prince Albert and the Etchings", was originally published in [1984] 12 European Intellectual Property Review 344 to 349. You can read it in full here.

For "Past historic 1: how patents for invention came from Venice to England", click here