"Small step or giant leap? - Requirements and scope of protection in IP law"

The success of our last IP retreats on "The Handsight Bias", "Injunction at a junction", "Nationalism vs. Globalization" and "The Measure of All Things" encourages us to invite again opinion leaders, including judges, academics, officials, litigators, patent attorneys, and in-house counsels, to discuss another central topic of intellectual property law.

This time we will deal with the relation between the requirements for and the scope of protection in intellectual property law and ask if there is a correlation or even a symmetry. Do small achievements deserve a narrow scope of protection and large one a broad one? This is explicitly provided for in design law. But what about unfair competition law, patent law, copyright law and trademark law?