Research seminar – Tuesday 13 June, 16.00, Room F111 (Fusion Building)

Charles Troedel (1835-1906) was a master printer and lithographer and founder of the firm Troedel & Co.  He was also the face behind the production of much of Australia’s earliest advertising material including posters, labels, and other ephemera.  Troedel’s role in the production of this capsule history has been overlooked.  The legal dimension to this history and the relationship between lithography and intellectual property law has also been overlooked.  This research project uncovers this long-overlooked story.  It uses Troedel’s archive of lithographs as the proxy to examine how lithography facilitated and shaped the production of early copyright and trade marks in Australia.  It also explores how lithography, as the technological arrangement mediating early colonial Australian society, was responsible for transforming advertising in 19th century Australia, and the legal categories under which such advertising was defined.

Amanda Scardamaglia is a Senior Lecturer and Department Chair of the Swinburne Law School.  She completed her LLB (Hons) and BA at The University of Melbourne before being admitted to practice as an Australian Legal Practitioner in the Supreme Court of Victoria.  She has also completed her PhD in Law at The University of Melbourne.  Amanda’s area of research is intellectual property law with a special focus on empirical and historical studies in trade mark law, branding and advertising.  Amanda was a State Library of Victoria Creative Fellow in 2015-2016.  She is the author of the book Colonial Australian Trade Mark Law: Narratives in Lawmaking, People, Power and Place (Australian Scholarly Publishing, 2015) and editor of the peer-reviewed journal Legal History.

Amanda is Visiting Research Fellow at CIPPM (Summer 2017)