Prior Art: Patents and the Nature of Invention in Architecture by Peter H. Christensen. MIT Press, 400 pp., $50.
It was many years ago, during the halcyon, sepia-toned late 1990s, that I first glimpsed the convergence of architecture and intellectual property law. As a newly minted attorney in the San Antonio office of a prestigious firm, I found myself swept up in a whirlwind of high-profile cases that captured national attention. Yet for every headline-grabbing lawsuit, countless others languished in the shadows, consigned to a kind of legal purgatory, awaiting their moment of relevance. My baptism by fire came in the form of representing an international electronics giant, a company as notorious for its patent infringements and trade-secret violations as it was celebrated for its cutting-edge mobile devices. As a green associate, I had tasks that seemed deceptively simple: I was to determine which documents were privileged and thus beyond the reach of opposing counsel. The rub, however, lay in the nature of these documents—a dizzying arra…