Mr Vuille, Mr Stouvenel and Mr Dunant

Born in 1868, Mr Philippe Dunant studied at the University of Geneva. He was sworn in as a lawyer before the Genevan Council of State on the 4th September 1891 in the presence of his uncle, Mr Albert Dunant who was Council President at the time. He began working in Mr Lortat-Jacob’s firm in Paris. Once back in Geneva in 1895, he worked in the firm run by Mr Richard, Mr Vuille and Mr Stouvenel and rapidly became one of their partners.

 

An outstanding violinist, he was a member of several committees and musical groups and was the first violinist for a number of years in a chamber musical quartet. After writing a thesis on The Law on Works by Musical Composers, he continued in the firm, specialising in intellectual property. Six years after the entry into force of the first Swiss law on trademarks in 1898, he published his brilliant Treaty on Trademarks to which judges and lawyers still refer on a constant basis. This subject was to become the focus of a class he would later give as a lecturer at the Law Faculty.

 

After the departure of Mr Stouvenel, who founded his own law firm, and upon reaching the end of his partnership agreement with Mr Vuille in 1915, Mr Dunant left the firm to practise law independently on the same premises. Dismayed at the run-down, dilapidated state of the Courthouse, Mr Dunant played an active role in the movement that successfully lobbied for some modest but urgent improvements to the old building only several years before his death. He was also one of those who campaigned for the creation of a Bar Association, to which he was still secretary when he died. At the beginning of the University term in 1918, the Law Faculty had planned to appoint him Professor of Intellectual Property.

 

Unfortunately he became fatally ill with Spanish influenza on the 5th of September 1918 and died at age 50, several days after the death of his eldest daughter who had become fatally ill with the same disease.

 

Following Mr Dunant’s sudden death, his firm was taken over by Mr Jaques Le Fort and Mr Eugène Empeyta on the 1st of September, 1918.