In this first post, I shall discuss the aim, vision and plan of action of this blog. I have pinned the contents of this post in the “About” section of this website.
Notes from an IP Theory enthusiast. This platform has a purpose. In our respective law school journeys, we have realised the importance of theoretical reading and appreciating academic work, but have always wondered about the great divide when it comes to the academic ideas we read and the actual legal practice on that subject. The purpose here is to dissect academia and showcase its essence and relevance in practice. This is a readers perspective, for our readers. This is just our understanding of the material discussed, and nothing beyond it. Do not trust us much (we are naive students after all!) however do read and join the discourse.
IP has been a subject area which has intuitively attracted both of us. We, as one could call it, are IP aficionados (not to mean that we are pro- Intellectual Property – we are conflicted on that). We LOVE reading and theorising around IP and delve into various philosophies in the context of how it affects the disciplines within IP. Besides this, we have also been lucky enough, while reading for pleasure, to indulge in the academic works of various renowned and developing IP scholars and professors from around the world, getting exposed to various thoughts and debates on the purpose of IP in the first place.
Through this platform, we aim to indulge our readers (hopefully students, academics, practitioners, judges and aficionados) into these academic readings and thoughts, and rethink the intuitive dialogue that runs around the areas of IP.
The blog offers the views of various legal theorists and philosophers and how we could use them while reading IP. An instance of the same would be our indulgence with Kant and his philosophy on “autonomy” with respect to copyright. Another could be our reading of Foucault and his piece on “Who is an Author”. We have a collection of a number of such theorists who we shall attempt to explore and allow many of our readers to contextualise their relevance in the current IP debates. We shall also be indulging with the works of various academics from various schools of thought in IP Policy. We aim to present these “hostile debates” and ruminate about how they matter while practicing and implementing IP.
Using this tool of academia, this blog shall also endeavour to examine the Indian Copyright Act, its legislative schema and the interpretations by the courts – to ponder upon whether they move towards the goal which IP was supposed to fulfil in the first place, or have they changed the goal in itself.
On this platform, we also present various other projects that we are working on together, as well as individually, for anyone who is interested to contribute and indulge in a discourse.
We do not have a staunch ideology and we are yet conflicted trying to decipher what we actually “should” be following and we hope this blog helps in that process.
WHAT WE DO NOT DO:
On this platform, we do not discuss case laws and general upcoming IP jurisprudence of the courts in India and Abroad. Although if tempted we may try to theoretically comment on them. However, that is not what we generally will do. We are extremely theoretical in our approach, to support normalising the use of theory in practice, rather than ruling it out as “too theoretical”. If you wish to check out our comments and analysis on case laws and related jurisprudence, we write for IPRMENT Law, and absolutely love it. You could also check out IPKat for international IP Jurisprudence.
IP Musings 