In Spring 2021, the Law Department at Stockholm University was presented with its own personalised Gömböc!
Stockholm is the first law department in the world to receive such a donation, which the Hungarian Ambassador to Sweden personally delivered to the Head of the Department, Prof Gustaf Sjöberg. A more formal ceremony is due to take place in September 2021, provided that this is possible due to the ongoing COVID restrictions.
The Gömböc represents a significant mathematical achievement and is also of great relevance to intellectual property law: in 2020, the Court of Justice of the European Union (CJEU) issued a ruling concerning the registrability of its shape as a trade mark. Read more about the donation on the Law Department website here (in Swedish).
Prof Eleonora Rosati, IFIM Director, has written about the impact of the CJEU ruling and said: “The Law Department at Stockholm University is the first law department in the world to be presented with its own Gömböc: this shows that the Gömböc not only is of great relevance to the world of sciences and mathematics, but has also gained a key place in the legal field, notably that of intellectual property law. The dispute concerning the registrability of the shape of the Gömböc as a trade mark has given rise to one of the most significant and far-reaching recent decisions of the Court of Justice of the European Union in the field of trade mark law. I am personally honoured and proud that, thanks to the generosity of Gabor Domokos and Otto Albrecht, Stockholm University now holds a piece of intellectual property law history!”
