author
Lewis Boyd Sebastian
1852–1926
A British barrister and legal writer, he became one of the best-known early authorities on trade-mark law. His books and pamphlets also ranged into the history of London's old livery companies, showing a strong interest in how law and institutions shaped public life.
1 Audiobook
An Old City Company: A Sketch of the History and Conditions of the Skinners' Company of London
by Lewis Boyd Sebastian
About the author
Called to the bar at Lincoln's Inn in 1876, Lewis Boyd Sebastian studied at Exeter College, Oxford, where he earned a B.A. in 1873 and was named Vinerian Law Scholar in 1874. Contemporary reference works describe him as a barrister and the author of legal studies on trade marks, a subject that became the center of his published work.
Sebastian is best remembered for writing The Law of Trade Marks and Their Registration and later The Law of Trade Mark Registration under the Trade Marks Act, 1905. Those books helped establish him as a leading specialist in a growing area of commercial law, at a time when branding, registration, and industrial competition were becoming more important in modern business.
His surviving bibliography also shows a wider curiosity about English civic history. Works such as The City Livery Companies and Their Corporate Property and An Old City Company reflect an interest in the traditions, property, and public role of London's historic guilds. No suitable confirmed portrait was found during this search.