Studies of Chinese Intellectual Property:Academic Basis and Development Idea

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1 Journal of Intellectual Property Rights Vol 20, March 2015, pp Studies of Chinese Intellectual Property:Academic Basis and Development Idea WANG Xu-kun 1,2, Zhao Qu 1, DING Kun 1,2 and Zhang Shanshan 1 1 School of Public Administration and Law,Dalian University of Technology, Dalian ,China 2 Development Research Centre for Intellectual Property of Liaoning Province,Dalian ,China Received 4 January 2015; accepted 16 February 2015 The intellectual property research of Chinese academics began in 1980s has accumulated a substantial research results and laid a solid academic foundation for the startups of intellectual property studies. The disciplines of studies of intellectual property established, under establishment and to be established consists of five discipline sub-groups, namely, basic studies of intellectual property right, legal studies of intellectual property rights, special studies of intellectual property rights, sub-field studies of intellectual property rights and edge studies of intellectual property right, thus constituting the development pattern of the disciplinary system. In order to promote the derivative development of a series of new disciplines of intellectual property, researchers will continue to strengthen the discipline integration-differentiation consciousness, discipline convergence-integration consciousness and the research of discipline meta-question in the coming period. Keywords: Intellectual property, studies of intellectual property, comprehensive discipline group, discipline system Intellectual property is also known as intellectual achievement ownership, and it is defined as an individual or collective ownership of product and spiritual wealth as individually or collectively created in technical, scientific, cultural and other fields. Intellectual property is mainly composed of industrial property (patent, trademark rights, and trade secret rights) and copyright. The studies of intellectual property contain strategy research of intellectual property, 1 management research of intellectual property 2 and legal research related intellectual property, 3 involving law, economics and other disciplines. The studies of intellectual property management mainly discuss acquisition management, maintenance management, operations management, daily management, international business management 4 and other aspects of intellectual property, or introduce intellectual property management functions, basic principles, management system, category management, coordination management and so on. 5 Diversified intellectual property researches promote to generate intellectual property sociology, 6 intellectual property economics, 7 intellectual property law philosophy 8 and other disciplines. In addition, some scholars not only researching intellectual property issues from the philosophical view, 9 and also making multi-dimensional Corresponding author: qz_31@sina.cn interpretation on nature of intellectual property, 10 thus analyzing various issues in the field of intellectual property from diversified points, such as intellectual property value and nature, theoretical foundation of intellectual property culture, transfer and capitalization of intellectual property, intellectual property commercialization strategy, relationship between intellectual property protection and antitrust, principles and strategies of intellectual property management, means of intellectual property administration and grassroots management, strategic planning of intellectual property, strategic management of intellectual property, intellectual property risk identification and control strategies. Some intellectual property works have been liberalized from the formalist frame or divisions between patent, trademarks, copyright or patent law, trademark law, copyright law, and integrated multidisciplinary research results. 11,12 These attempts have laid a foundation for start-up of studies of intellectual property. As a subject, the study of intellectual property taking intellectual property as the study object, is a product of disciplinization extension of research achievements of intellectual property. However, researches in this field are not much. This paper collects information from current intellectual property research journal articles and books to present the development pattern of Chinese intellectual property

2 QU et al.: STUDIES OF CHINESE INTELLECTUAL PROPERTY 97 discipline system, and further proposes the development strategy for promoting the evolution of intellectual property disciplines in future. Academic Foundation for Generation of Study of Intellectual Property Similar with the practices in the West: scientists appeared after physicist, chemist, astronomer and other titles, the concept intellectual property appeared actually after the patent, trademark, and copyright concepts have been accepted for many years. It is shown in the China Academic Journals Database (CAJD) of China National Knowledge Infrastructure (CNKI), the first journal literature mentioning the term intellectual property is the Section IX of Import & Export Business Seminar : China s Export Commodities Trademark Registration, written by China Council for the Promotion of International Trade (CCPIT), which was published in the second issue of International Trade in It used intellectual property when mentioned in the International Bureau of WIPO. In the present study, CAJD and China National Library as data source, the intellectual property, intellectual property strategy, intellectual property management and intellectual property law were screened as retrieval terms. Taking intellectual property in the title as retrieval codes to retrieve in CAJD, and literatures were found, hereinafter referred to as intellectual property research journal literature. Table 1 shows the year-wise distribution of these literatures (data in 2014 are not complete, and the bracketed item is particularly marked in the table). Although, these literatures contain a few conference reports and other non-paper catalog annual indexes, vast majorities belong to academic papers; therefore, the changes in number of academic papers can be used as a basic numerical representation for expressing evolution of intellectual property research. Table 1 shows that the first paper with intellectual property in the title appeared in Chinese Academic Journal Literature in In 1987, the quantity of the academic journal literatures rose to more than 10, and then to 100 in 1992; it exceeds1000 in The highest point, 2043 pcs, appeared in Over the past two years, the quantity remained more than 1800 pcs. For over 30 years, journal literature of intellectual property research showed a significant growth trend in slight fluctuations. Table 1 Year-wise distribution of the number of journal literatures containing intellectual property in titles ( ) S. No. Year Number of journal literatures (1509) Retrieval date: 19 November 2014 China National Library being the largest public library in China was searched for intellectual property as a search term in online public directory inquiry system by the option official title. Finally, 1704 related books were collected. Excluding the electronic resources, legal texts, and other materials repeated with paper books, the remaining books were totaled to 1453 pcs. Table 2 shows their year-wise distribution of publications (data in 2014 are not complete, and the bracketed item is particularly marked in the table). Among the books of intellectual property as searched in China National Library, it was shown the earliest publication year was By means of the academic search function of Duxiu.Com two

3 98 J INTELLEC PROP RIGHTS, MARCH 2015 Table 2 Year-wise distribution of the number of books containing intellectual property in book titles ( ) S. No. Year Number of books (79) Total 1453 Retrieval date: 21 November 2014 intellectual property works were found to be published in , 15 Table 2 shows the quantity of published intellectual property works has increased from few pcs in the early 1990s to more than 30 pcs in the late 1990s and then about 100 pcs in 2008, over the past 30 years. Although, the quantity has been under slight fluctuation, it is still trending to grow in a phased manner. As more scholars have taken intellectual property as a research object, accumulating tens of thousands of journal articles and books, then research products increased in significant growth rate, it is no doubt they laid a solid academic foundation for establishment of initiatory study of intellectual property. Although, there is still no meta-research journal articles containing studies of intellectual property in title, except for two works taking it as the title keywords, 16,17 the study of intellectual property has been ready for further development and expansion depending on such abundant research supports. The study of intellectual property is regarded as a start-up discipline, because the intellectual property hasn t been a research object fully covered by any discipline till now. As we all know, intellectual property law is a branch subject of law with intellectual property as a research object, and it has become a systemic theory in China for over 20 years. In 1989, the first article containing the term intellectual property law in title appeared in Chinese journal literature. 18 Currently, there are 60 such literatures in CAJD. In 1992, the first work titled intellectual property law was published in China. 19 Currently, total 75 similar works can be retrieved from online public directory inquiry system under China National Library (excluding repeated works). 91 related works can be retrieved in Duxiu.Com. Intellectual Property Law has developed in a highly mature phase, but it fails to make full-range or integrated study on intellectual property, from the perspectives of other disciplines (such as, philosophy, ethics, sociology, economics, education, etc.), under limited perspectives, only focusing on legal issues related to intellectual property. Since 1990s, Chinese scholars have studied intellectual property from other perspectives of other disciplines. Firstly, due to active participation of scholars from other disciplines, intellectual property researches were no longer limited to law perspective. For example, from CAJD, 1334 works containing intellectual property strategy and 819 works containing intellectual property management in titles can be retrieved (as on 22 November 2014). The National Library s online public directory inquiry system, shows a total of 70 books with intellectual property strategy and 43 books with intellectual property management in titles, respectively (as on 22 November 2014). Visibly, studies of intellectual property are gradually towards comprehensive and integration. Development Pattern of Studies of Intellectual Property The study of intellectual property is a product of comprehensive and full-range study of intellectual property, thus it must contain a series of subdisciplines. As a whole, it is a group of disciplines with internal structure. As previously established, intellectual property law, patent law, and trademark law, as well as intellectual property sociology, intellectual property economics, intellectual property philosophy, philosophy of intellectual

4 QU et al.: STUDIES OF CHINESE INTELLECTUAL PROPERTY 99 property law, etc., in the initiation stage, highlighting partial study on intellectual property, and can be classified as sub-disciplines under studies of intellectual property. Based on the existing research achievements of intellectual property, a discipline establishment program of intellectual property studies composed of sub-disciplines (interdisciplinary subdisciplines) is proposed. The disciplinary system s development pattern is shown in Fig. 1. In this figure, sub-disciplines that has been established, or are being established and to be established can be divided into five discipline groups, according to the similarities and differences in the specific object or area of research. Group I is collectively referred to as basic studies of intellectual property, which may also be derived to intellectual property history, history of studies of intellectual property, comparative research on intellectual property, intellectual propertymetrology and other sub-disciplines, in addition to general intellectual property studies. General study of intellectual property is the core foundation and classic discipline of intellectual property. It aims to explore a variety of general, universal, fundamental issues in field of intellectual property, such as intellectual property nature, basic characteristics, main types, social function, body types, object forms, restrictions and ownership, acquisition and maintenance, protection and management, licensing and transformation, strategy and tactics, etc. Intellectual property history and history of intellectual property studies aim to study appearance and development history of intellectual property and intellectual property studies, by using theory and methodology of history, as interdisciplinary sub-disciplines. Comparative study of intellectual property is to research law of intellectual property and intellectual property with comparative methods, further to compare between different periods for the same country or regions, or between different countries or regions at the same period, also to compare between intellectual property law terms or between intellectual property law schools. Through a variety of intellectual property measurable indicators, intellectual property metrology aims to show changes in the number of researchers, research works, and legal texts in the field of intellectual property, and to analyze the mechanism of evolution. Since 2005, Chinese journals have published nearly 20 papers related to the measurement of intellectual property 12,20 which can be regarded as early studies on metrology of intellectual property. The start-up metrology of Fig 1 Development pattern of intellectual property discipline system

5 100 J INTELLEC PROP RIGHTS, MARCH 2015 intellectual property 21 and to-be-established trademarks metrology can be regarded as sub-disciplines of intellectual property metrology. Group II is a group of sub-disciplines as developed on basis of laws, including intellectual property law that has been established, intellectual property legislation, intellectual property litigation law, intellectual property enforcement studies, intellectual property criminology and intellectual property judgment studies that are being established, which can be collectively called as intellectual property law discipline. Traditionally, intellectual property law has been regarded as a sub-discipline of civil law or economic law. After the study of intellectual property is established, intellectual property law can be regarded as an interdisciplinary study between intellectual property and lower civil law and economic law. Intellectual property law appeared earlier in the field of intellectual property, and now it has been trending to diversify and develop more sub-disciplines such as intellectual property law philosophy, international intellectual property law, as well as intellectual property law, history of intellectual property law, history of intellectual property law studies that are expected to be established. From the view on the relation between the whole and the part, Group III is regarded as a group of sub-disciplines of intellectual property law, such as patent law, trademark law, and copyright law and so on. Intellectual property criminology is a sub-discipline between Intellectual property and criminology, and its sub-disciplines mainly include criminal sociology of intellectual property, intellectual property criminal psychology, and intellectual property criminal investigation. Group III is also composed of individual-activitytargeted sub-disciplines or sub-disciplines focusing on various types of intellectual properties, such as, patents (patent right), trademark (trademark right), copyright, trade of intellectual property, intellectual property agents, etc., which can be collectively referred to as special intellectual property studies. Patent studies aims to study creation of inventions, acquisition and utilization of rights and interests, and a series of related activities. 22 In late 1980s, China set up patent study courses for engineering students in universities. 23 Driven by patent education, patent study became another explorative discipline in the field of intellectual property, and it has derived, is deriving and will derive more sub-disciplines, such as, patent history, history of patent studies, patent metrology, creative patent, patent law, comparison studies of patent law, patent sociology, patent economics, patent marketing, international patent licensing trade, patent agency, patent management, patent strategy, patent informatics, patent information science 24 patent literature analysis, patent map graphics 25 and so on. Trademark and copyright studies may derive trademark sociology, trademark economics, trademark management, copyright sociology, copyright economics, copyright managementand other sub-disciplines, on basis of existing trademark law and copyright law. In Group IV, sub-disciplines are divided in accordance with industry, market or sector, including agricultural intellectual property studies, mining intellectual property studies, manufacturing intellectual property studies, defense intellectual property studies, medicine intellectual property studies, information intellectual property studies, culture intellectual property studies, media intellectual property studies, corporate intellectual property studies, colleges and universities intellectual property studies, international intellectual property studies, etc., which are collectively called as sectored intellectual property studies. Over the past decades, scholars have accumulated a certain achievement in sectored intellectual property research; it is shown from retrieval in CAJD, 1306, 168, and 147 literatures respectively, contain corporate intellectual property, international intellectual property, and agricultural intellectual property in titles. In Duxiu.Com, 84, 32, and 10 works respectively contain corporate intellectual property, international intellectual property, and agricultural intellectual property in titles. Such the achievements have laid necessary foundation for establishment of these sub-disciplines. Group V is composed of intellectual property philosophy, 26 intellectual property ethics, intellectual property culturology, intellectual property economics, intellectual property sociology, intellectual property psychology, 27 intellectual property strategy, intellectual property management, intellectual property pedagogy, intellectual property ecology, intellectual property geography, etc., collectively referred to as interdisciplinary intellectual property studies; the above disciplines can be regarded as interdisciplinary disciplines that are being established or may be established by integrating with philosophy, sociology or ecology, geography, such as, intellectual

6 QU et al.: STUDIES OF CHINESE INTELLECTUAL PROPERTY 101 property philosophy or, intellectual property ethics as established by integrating intellectual property with philosophy or ethics, as well as intellectual property sociology, intellectual property psychology, intellectual property strategy connecting intellectual property as established by integrating intellectual property with sociology, strategy or education disciplines. These disciplines may be further divided into more second-level or third-level sub-disciplines, such as, corporate intellectual property management or colleges and universities intellectual property management and other second-level sub-disciplines, under management of intellectual property, process management of corporate intellectual property, strategy management of corporate intellectual property, risk management of corporate intellectual property and other sub-disciplines under corporate intellectual property. Development Ideas for Derivation of Intellectual Property Disciplines The basic evolution trend of scientific knowledge disciplines is to derive more new disciplines by dividing, intersecting, and integrating current disciplines, thus to continuously increase the total quantity of disciplines. Studies of intellectual property are being under start-up phase. The emergence and development of sub-disciplines, as shown in Fig. 1, mainly depend on many subjective and objective conditions, including market demand in social sectors, supporting role of related disciplines, accumulation of research results, human resource factors such as, research team's intention, academic strength and so on. From the perspective of research intention, it is recommended that researchers should further strengthen the integration and derivation of disciplines, connecting and intersection of disciplines, as well as meta-problem research on disciplines in future, in order to promote derivation of various emerging sub-disciplines. Strengthen the Integration and Derivation of Disciplines When scholars target at a research object, and has accumulated a certain research results, emergence of successful disciplines classification depends on their clear sense of discipline, especially integrationderivation of disciplines. For intellectual property studies, sense of integration and derivation is reflected from two dimensions. Regarding the direction of integration, some researchers classify the research disciplines that they are engaged into certain groups; from their view, intellectual property, patent, and trademark should be relatively independent as the research objects, and in no doubt intellectual property studies, patent studies, and trademark studies appeared in a bottom-to-up integration manner; in the past, researchers pay excessive attentions to highlight legal interpretation of intellectual property, patent, and trademark concepts. Because intellectual property law, patent law, and trademark law appeared from the late 1980s to the 1990s, many researchers were of the limited opinion, and they habitually classified patent, trademark study in patent law, trademark law; and the study of intellectual property in intellectual property law. Currently, researchers shall widen their academic horizons out of the boundaries of law, and expand patent law, trademark law, and intellectual property law into their parent disciplines: patent studies, trademark studies, and intellectual property studies. Regarding diversifying the direction, researchers often need to realize that research objects like, intellectual property, patent, and trademark are possible to be sub-divided. If the sub-divided research objects are still relatively independent, they shall be committed to promote sub-division of disciplines by using top-down partial achievements. Taking strategic research on intellectual property as an example, establishment of intellectual property strategy studies should not be regarded as an at the end of the study, and it should serve as a new starting point for discipline extension and sub-division; then researchers shall not only do research on intellectual property strategy, patent strategy, trademark strategy and so on from macro- or micro-level, and gradually establish national intellectual property strategy studies, industrial intellectual property strategy studies, regional intellectual property strategy studies, industrial trademark strategy studies, regional trademark strategy studies, industrial patent strategy studies, regional patent strategy studies and other sub-disciplines, but also study intellectual property strategy, patent strategy, trademark strategy for different types of social organizations at the micro-level, and gradually establish corporate intellectual property strategy, universities intellectual property strategy, research institutions intellectual property strategy, corporate patent strategy, corporate trademark strategy, publishing agencies copyright strategy, 28 software companies copyright strategy and other sub-disciplines.

7 102 J INTELLEC PROP RIGHTS, MARCH 2015 Strengthen Connecting and Intersection of Disciplines Any discipline is not a closed body of knowledge. Just as an ecosystem that needs to exchange outside material, energy, information; a discipline must also interact, learn, transplant certain concepts, theories, methods, from other disciplines, thus to obtain important support conditions for further survival and development, and continue to derive new subdisciplines. The development history of modern science shows that the emergence of interdisciplinary discipline is a feature in continued expansion of scientific knowledge. Intellectual property is closely linked with philosophy, social sciences, and many interdisciplinary disciplines, with very distinctive interdisciplinary characteristics. It can be positioned as a multi-interdisciplinary discipline group in which main part is included in social sciences. Intellectual property development is inseparable from ethics, culturology, law, history, sociology, psychology, pedagogy, management science, geography, ecology and other related disciplines. In order to analyze its position in new sub-disciplines, it is needed to pay great attention to intersection area between various types of disciplines, and promote penetration or intersection between various types of disciplines. Firstly, it is required to focus on intersection area between various types of disciplines under the intellectual property. Fig. 1 shows various subdisciplines between various discipline groups. They are classified as discipline community of intellectual property, relatively-linked, available in further integration and intersection. During integration and intersection process, there are differences in integration possibility of each discipline. As established on basis of comparison methods, comparison studies of intellectual property is highly possible in integration and intersection. Comparison studies of intellectual property may intersect or integrate with Group II, III, IV and V to generate many sub-disciplines such as, comparative intellectual property criminology, comparative trademark, comparative media intellectual property, comparative education of intellectual property. The comparative education of intellectual property can be seen as an interdisciplinary study between comparative study of intellectual property and intellectual property pedagogy, and it aims to explore similarities and differences in intellectual property education for the same country or education entities (colleges and universities) in different periods, or similarities and differences in intellectual property education between different countries or education entities (colleges and universities) in the same period, as well as similarities and differences in educational concepts of intellectual property, and management modes. Secondly, it is recommended to focus on intersectional areas between intellectual property disciplines and external disciplines. Philosophy, sociology, and some interdisciplinary studies may integrate with intellectual property studies to generate and derive more interdisciplines as included in Group V, and also may integrate with sub-disciplines under other discipline groups to generate and derive more management sciences under interdisciplinary groups. 29 In addition to intellectual property management by integrating intellectual property studies, the management may integrate with patents, trademarks, agriculture intellectual property, intellectual property of universities to establish more second level interdisciplinary sub-disciplines, such as, patent management, trademark management, agriculture intellectual property management, as well as intellectual property management of colleges and universities. Interpenetration between intellectual property and its sub-disciplines and external disciplines should be promoted from two aspects, intellectual property researchers shall actively promote introduction of concepts, theories, and methods from external discipline, related external disciplines researchers shall actively expand research scope and explore values of their owndisciplines in intellectual property research. Strengthen Research on Discipline Meta-Problem The so-called disciplinary meta-problem refers to a variety of general, universal, basic features in a discipline. research on discipline meta-problem is referred to as discipline meta-research for short, which is related to a discipline s history, target range, disciplinary positioning (association), research paradigm, research methods, theoretical system, structure, applications, development trend, evolution situation, literature review, development environment, future prospects, international comparisons, teaching, teachers, and academic talents, etc. as for start-up intellectual property studies, target range, positioning, research paradigm, theoretical system, structure can be used as critical elements incurrent discipline meta-research. Discipline meta-research is extremely important to any discipline under the evolution stage, because it functions as self-awareness or self-reflection of

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