PTC FORUM: Online Journal of the Patent, Trademark and Copyright Research Foundation

Editorial

Intellectual Property Research

Whether in the intellectual property field, or in other fields of law, research has a certain utility at various different levels. It can be rarefied and academic, inspiring creative work in others and filling in gaps in their thinking and attitudes, but not always of direct interest and importance to practitioners and administrators. At the other extreme, it can be highly practical, concerned with statistics and finances; less conceptual, perhaps, than research falling in the former category, but no less valuable for that. Somewhere in between, there is wide scope for research meeting academically respectable, professionally interesting, original and conceptual, practical and grounded, criteria. There is room in the work of the PTC Research Foundation for all these categories.

While much of the esoteric research in the intellectual property field may appear to be of limited interest to the busy member of a law firm or corporate executive, it should not be overlooked. Many of the contributions to this type of research, as recent digests of articles show, is concerned with the question whether intellectual property rights are rightly or appropriately treated as a form of property at all. At first sight this may seem a sterile kind of speculation; but in practice it is certain to affect in the long run the way in which our legislators treat new types of right and new forms of legal protection. Already there is a tendency to think in terms of sui generis rights, as an alternative to trying, sometimes vainly, to fit new concepts into old classifications. Design rights and rights in the creation of databases are cases in point.

As for statistical and financial research and, generally, research into the impact of economic considerations on the use, protection and disposal of intellectual property rights, these should not be regarded as in any way inferior to the purer research favoured by the legal theorists. Until fairly recently, intellectual property tended to be studied almost in isolation, with the economic aspects as a somewhat external factor. Yet the decisions to be made by large corporations and small businesses alike may depend on an economic assessment of the value of different types of protection. Advising an inventor, for example, who may have high hopes of marketing the invention throughout Europe, depends on an assessment of the economic advantages and disadvantages of seeking a patent in two, three, five or more European countries. Research into the financial costs and benefits of the different options is essential.

Between the recondite and the severely practical, there are countless areas in which research can add to the knowledge, understanding and appreciation of the limits and potentialities of intellectual property. Comparative studies are of special importance in a world in which the trend is towards greater harmonization. Differences in approach between the United States and Europe are familiar enough, but still warrant detailed study, with a view to closing some of the gaps ("first to invent", "first to file"). Differences in approach among the developing countries may appear to some to be of peripheral in importance, but, as the twenty-first century advances, are certain to have an increasing influence on the way in which governments reconcile the encouragement of investment with the protection of local customs and cultures. It is as important for food corporations in the United States to know the boundaries between taking traditional farming techniques and adapting the products by means of genetic modification. Research may not have answers to all these questions; but, at the least, it can provide some invaluable clues to resolving new and challenging problems. [10014]