1992 Congressman Richard Gephardt
At its WORDESIGN92 annual conference in San Francisco, California, IDSA honored Mr. Gephardt and Congressman Carlos Moorhead "for their leadership, insight, dedication and eloquence on behalf of the design copyright legislation. By sponsoring HR 1790, 'The Design Innovation and Technology Act of 1991,' they have brought this legislation out of the closet and been instrumental in building the case for it."

HR 1790 would offer ten years of copyright protection to innovative and original product designs that are distinguishable and more than merely a trivial variation of prior designs. It would protect only the shape or appearance of a useful article, not how the product performs.

The IDSA leader of this effort was Cooper Woodring, FIDSA, Chair of IDSA's Industrial Design Protection Task Force. For more on the biography and career of Mr. Woodring, see the bio in the IDSA Past Presidents section.

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