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BLOG@IP::JURPatent Attorney Axel H Horns' Blog on Intellectual Property Law.
Monday, February 19, 2007DE: Hamburg University To Launch Research Project on Intellectual Property Rights in Europe.I just have stumbled over a call for participation issued by Dr. Sebastian Haunss and Dr. Lars Kohlmorgen of the Centre for Globalization and Governance at the Institure of political science of the Hamburg University, Germany:"[...] At the University of Hamburg's Centre for Globalization and Governance a team of social scientists is conducting a research project about conflicts around intellectual property rights. More specifically we are interested in the two EU directives on measures and procedures to ensure the enforcement of intellectual property rights (IPRED 1) and on the patentability of computer-implemented inventions (CII Directive/Software Patents).A more general project description is available here. The project appears to be funded by the Fritz-Thyssen-Foundation.My first thought was "Well, why shouldn't these scholars do some empirical research on conflicts around intellectual property rights?". But then I decided to have a brief look at the questionnaire and I got quite irritated. The main point of the entire questionnaire, question 5, reads: "Please qualify the importance of the following actors and assess the extent and intensity of your interaction with them."And, thereafter are listed:
And, I won't go into any further speculations about any hidden agenda possibly associated with this kind of research project. [UPDATE 2007-02-26] Today I've got a phone call from Dr. Haunss. He was quite unhappy with my Blog post, in particular in view of the "hidden agenda" question (see above). After an amicable discussion on that matter, one important aspect emerged. When reading the call for participation and the questionnaire my thoughts had been: Why on earth do they go on such a minefield where the matter in question appears to be quite a long time away from becoming history? Yes, the IPRED1 and CII Directives do represent closed issues in a technical sense as IPRED1 had been rubberstamped by the EU bodies while the CII Draft Directive finally had failed. But the related debates go on and on; keywords are, for example, IPRED2 and EPLA. In my view, it had not been entirely implausible that the interest of various anti-patent campaigners in the final results of such an empirical study might be much larger than that of the pro-patent camp. My speculation had gone into a direction what if the entire research project might have been briefed by FFII activists. However, Mr. Haunss argued that despite such undeniable obstacles as sketched in my posting they are eager to do the research now because of they fear that under the conditions of the Internet age in ten or twenty years many relevant documents and traces of this interesting and important political debate might have disappeared into thin air. Moreover, they had arranged interviews with some MEPs to get a baseline of facts from which to start the project. They see their own project as a piece of professionally conducted and independent empirical research where under some circumstances the analysis of social networks is generally deemed to be essential. I am not a sociologist and I do not have any idea as to whether or not any attempts to empirically analyse social networks under conditions of a political battlefield can make any sense. Mr. Hauss' concerns regarding the risk of loss of important documents in the digital age is not entirely implausible. Time will tell us. Anyway, it never was my intention to discredit empirical research of that kind across-the-board. Technorati Tags: Intellectual Property
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