Chizai No Frontier 1 (Frontiers of Intellectual Property - The Present and Future of Interdisciplinary Research)

This book is a compilation of papers on interdisciplinary research into intellectual property.

When it comes to interdisciplinary research, books seem to have a power that papers published in academic journals do not. In my own experience, there have been many cases where people from fields other than law had previously published work related to intellectual property, but I only became aware of their existence after it was published in book form. Considering that several people from other fields have become aware of me and approached me after reading a book I wrote, the reverse may also be true. Ultimately, the impact of having a book on the shelves of bookstores and being posted online as a commercially available book is surprisingly large, and this creates a hurdle that cannot be overcome even if academic journals are posted online and made accessible to the public.

Based on this idea, I conceived this book with the hope that if those interested in interdisciplinary research in the field of intellectual property law, as well as those conducting intellectual property-related research in fields other than intellectual property law, could come together and share some of their respective achievements, it would attract the interest of readers from a wide range of fields, inspire experiences similar to mine described above, and further advance interdisciplinary exchange in the field of intellectual property law. In doing so, after consulting with my co-editor, Professor Takakuni Yamane (Doshisha University), we decided to invite leading researchers from a variety of fields to contribute essays that would share some of the results of their own research, rather than a document that surveys the situation in each field, as this would be more in line with the book's goal of sparking interdisciplinary exchange.

Fortunately, this project was supported by a large number of authors from a wide range of fields, including intellectual property law scholars, and was completed as two collections of essays. This book is the first in the series, and features intellectual property law scholars, legal philosophers, constitutional scholars, anthropologists, and economists discussing intellectual property from their respective perspectives. In response to a request from the editors, each author wrote concisely about their cutting-edge research, while keeping in mind readers from other fields, and we believe that as a result, this book has achieved its intended purpose of serving as a catalyst for interdisciplinary research. In particular, the essays in this volume will likely continue to be referenced by researchers from a wide range of fields, as they shed light on the ideological background and theoretical assumptions that form the basis for considering intellectual property law.
 

(Written by TAMURA Yoshiyuki, Professor, Graduate Schools for Law and Politics / 2025)