This chapter draws from a paper presented at a workshop on IP Research Methodologies, held at Singapore Management University (SMU) on 25 February 2017. I thank Professor Irene Calboli for inviting me to participate in the workshop, and the organizers at SMU for their hospitality. I also thank the other participants for their inputs.
Banerjee, Arpan, 'A Primer on Intellectual Property and Popular Culture Research' , in Irene Calboli, and Maria Lillà Montagnani (eds) , Handbook of Intellectual Property Research: Lenses, Methods, and Perspectives (
, 2021; online edn, Oxford Academic , 23 Sept. 2021 ), https://doi.org/10.1093/oso/9780198826743.003.0026, accessed 10 Sept. 2024.
Navbar Search Filter Mobile Enter search term Search Navbar Search Filter Enter search term SearchA large number of intellectual property (IP) law cases have centred around works of popular culture. Traditionally, IP scholars have focused only on technical legal analysis, neglecting research on the aesthetic and cultural value of such works, or the experiences of creators. However, a growing body of interdisciplinary scholarship has changed this trend. This chapter highlights examples of such interdisciplinary scholarship, focusing on scholarship incorporating approaches from the humanities and empirical social sciences. The chapter discusses the methodologies and perspectives used in such works, and how they can complement traditional legal analysis.
Collection: Oxford Scholarship OnlinePopular culture has been defined in different ways, from quantitative definitions focusing on metrics like television ratings to qualitative definitions focusing on ‘inferior’ culture outside ‘high culture’. 1 These definitions are not always accurate. 2 Nevertheless, popular culture usually has elements of mass consumption and contemporariness. One can, therefore, perhaps define it through a legal lens—i.e. popular culture is usually represented through works contemporary enough to fall within the existing period of copyright protection (author’s lifetime and a further fifty years, per the Berne Convention, plus additional time in some countries). Popular culture may also be represented through well-known trademarks, such as the Playboy Bunny or Ronald McDonald.
Many leading intellectual property (IP) cases have centred around works of popular culture, such as Campbell v. Acuff-Rose (a song parodying a Roy Orbison song), 3 Bridgeport v. Dimension Films (an NWA song using a sample), 4 Hadley v. Kemp (a Spandau Ballet song), 5 Baigent v. Random House (Dan Brown’s The Da Vinci Code), 6 Huston v. Turner (a colourized version of The Asphalt Jungle), 7 Deckmyn v. Vandersteen (an anti-immigrant cartoon appropriating Belgian comic book characters), 8 Pillsbury v. Milky Way (a sexual parody of the Pillsbury Dough Boy), 9 and Mattel v. MCA Records (the song ‘Barbie Girl’). 10 In such cases, lawyers and judges often focus strictly on blackletter law. 11 However, IP law scholarship can be enriched by moving beyond dry legal analysis. Over the past decade, several academicians have produced high-quality IP scholarship while engaging with popular culture. This chapter highlights examples of such scholarship, based on the premise that it can complement conventional legal analysis. Thus, I do not seek to displace traditional legal analysis, but merely suggest interdisciplinary models where such analysis can mingle with popular culture analysis.
In Section II, I will categorize varieties of IP and popular culture scholarship. In Section III, I will discuss scholarship influenced by the humanities, as well as calls among humanities scholars to engage more closely with practical legal issues. In Section IV, I will discuss scholarship influenced by the social sciences, with an emphasis on qualitative empirical research. I will conclude by considering future directions in IP and popular culture scholarship.
An influential report had compartmentalized legal research into four categories: (1) expository research (blackletter law); (2) legal theory research (jurisprudence and legal philosophy); (3) fundamental research (sociology of law, or law and economics); (4) and law reform research (sociolegal research). 12
Many criticize such compartmentalization, arguing that legal researchers employ diverse methods and straddle between disciplines. 13 In IP scholarship, compartmentalization is especially difficult as a fair amount of scholarship has emanated from outside the legal academy. Even within the legal academy, many have drawn from other disciplines. Nevertheless, for a limited functional purpose, research on IP and popular culture can be broadly categorized as rooted in three areas, which may overlap: (1) doctrinal law, jurisprudence and social science; (2) the humanities; and (3) empirical social science. This categorization is explained in the Venn diagram below.
Two caveats apply here. First, these categories may be overbroad. More detailed categories may be seen in two interdisciplinary IP collections, which respectively classify copyright chapters into ten categories (including history, economics, linguistics, literature, art, and sociology) 14 and trademark chapters into nine (including positive law, marketing, law and economics, philosophy and anthropology). 15 Second, deciding what qualifies as IP and popular culture scholarship, and then what belongs to each of the three categories, is a subjective, inexact process. I have cherry-picked a handful of works from within and outside the legal academy, drawing from personal research, recommendations, and a list of highly cited IP articles. 16 While United States (US)-based scholars frequently dominate IP scholarship, my classification includes non-US scholars.
Types of research on IP and popular culture
Characteristics of Sets A, B, and C:A: analysis of statutes or case law; jurisprudential analysis; analysis based on other branches of law; economic analysis of law; policy recommendations.
B: analysis of artistic genres or aesthetics; historical or political analysis
C: applied economics; sociolegal research; fieldwork; interviews and surveys; policy recommendations.
Elements of Subsets and Intersecting Sets:A ∩ B ∩ C = Discussed in part 2 of this chapter.
To reiterate, the above classification is inexact. For example, one highly cited paper opens with a discussion of Tarnation and Mashin’ of the Christ, two collage-like films using copious copyrighted material. 43 Almost the entire article is confined to legal analysis, making it an appropriate candidate for the subset A– B– C. Yet, by making the reader aware of new cinematic genres, even if briefly, there may be a case to place it in (A ∩ B) – C. Similarly, I have placed Sunder’s paper on storyline copying in B-A-C. The paper examines a screenplay by an internationally acclaimed Indian director and a Japanese anime series, allegedly plagiarised by Steven Spielberg and Disney respectively. The paper reads like a work of humanities scholarship, with extensive discussion on cinema, culture, and politics. Yet, some may contend that the paper was published in a legal theory journal and may serve as a critique of copyright jurisprudence, making it a member of (A ∩ B) – C. Likewise, in one of the edited collections in B – A– C, a culture studies professor analyses storyline copying in Bollywood. At one point, she departs from her non-law focus to criticize a legalistic paper written by me on the subject. 44
Ultimately, these contradictions concern a wider dilemma of ‘defining exactly where one discipline begins and another ends’. 45 Nevertheless, in many cases, the classification is justified. Some articles simply do not qualify for the intersecting sets. Here, the subset A– B–C is of significance. Much of this subset encompasses technical legal scholarship that lawyers are most familiar with. For example, Frank Schechter’s influential paper on trademark dilution is a fitting candidate for this subset. 46 Schechter later rephrased his argument thus: ‘[I]f you allow Rolls Royce restaurants and Rolls Royce cafeterias, and Rolls Royce pants, and Rolls Royce candy, in 10 years you will not have the Rolls Royce mark any more’. 47 Schechter’s article employed arguments directly relevant for judges and lawyers, sidestepping empirical research surveying Rolls Royce consumers, or a historical inquiry into the brand. In a similar vein, Samuelson’s oft-cited article, which I have placed in the same subset, scrutinizes fair use cases involving popular culture works, but not the works themselves.
There is nothing wrong in holding that conventional legal analysis, catering to judges and lawyers, should occupy a central position in IP and popular culture scholarship. One may point to Harry Edwards’ well-known critique of interdisciplinary scholarship failing to assist the legal profession. 48 Richard Posner, agreeing partly, says of some postmodernist scholarship: ‘No judge could get anything out of that literature’. 49 However, excessive reliance on technicalities can lead to absurdities. For example, in a case on as exciting a question as whether the storyline of a Harry Potter book was plagiarized, an attempt to determine substantial copying was made through an expert specializing in ‘lexical sharing analysis’, involving ‘a statistical analysis of the proportion of nouns, verbs and adjectives shared between the two texts’. 50 Thus, looking beyond the law can reduce mismatches between legal and artistic developments. 51 For instance, in Hadley v. Kemp, references were made to how musicians create songs by ‘jamming’. 52 Would it not benefit lawyers and judges to learn more about how musicians jam, and reflect on whether the law on copyright co-authorship fits smoothly with this? In Bridgeport v. Dimension Films, although the court based its reasoning on rigid legal principles (‘Get a licence or do not sample’ 53 ) it conceded that ‘hip hop artists may view this rule as stifling creativity’. 54 Here, scholars can make valuable contributions by examining the history of sampling in hip-hop and its cultural significance. Similarly, legal analysis of Huston v. Turner can benefit from references to film theory and history. Why did John Huston like to shoot in black-and-white? What was the aesthetic significance of showing the Asphalt Jungle in black-and-white?
Asking such questions also becomes important because of an elitist tendency among some judges to belittle popular culture. For example, in the US, a judge (later overruled) once observed that jazz compositions were ‘only the common garden variety of musical compositions’, lacking the ‘dignity’ of ‘higher’ choral or orchestral pieces. 55 Thus, ‘no obvious and substantial damage’ was caused by playing Irving Berlin’s songs in a ‘cheap’ dance hall without a licence. 56 In an English copyright case, involving two historical fantasy books, a judge observed, ‘One must not under-estimate the commercial attraction of the rubbish which I have attempted to describe’. 57 In another English case, a moral rights dispute between two rap bands, the court described the lyrics as ‘for practical purposes a foreign language’. 58
Michael Dorf interprets Edwards’ critique as a case for ‘Goldilocks’ scholarship ‘that’s neither too abstract nor too concrete, but just right’. 59 This, perhaps, is a model that scholarship on IP and popular culture can aspire towards, especially within the legal academy. The most useful templates would then lie within the subsets intersecting with set A, with A ∩ B ∩ C being particularly interesting. The next two sections discuss these subsets.
James Boyd White notably criticized lawyers for using ‘technical’ language. 60 White, a professor of both law and English literature, inspired the Law and Literature movement in the 1980s, which metamorphosed into a wider Law and Humanities movement. 61 An offshoot of Law and Humanities, linked more closely to popular culture, has been the Law and Film movement. 62 In the 1980s, Posner dismissed Law and Literature. Posner argued that law was ‘a technique of government’ rather than ‘a humanity’, and that literary analysis had ‘no useful application to’ law. 63 During the 1990s, Posner reiterated his opposition to the movement. 64 Posner was not alone. When a Law and Film course was first introduced at Harvard, ‘technical law’ professors allegedly reacted with ‘guffaws’ and ‘derision’. 65
Posner has since revised his ‘negative tone’ and described Law and Literature as ‘rich and promising’, even engaging with Law and Film. 66 But Posner is still critical of the ‘amateurishness’ of ‘weak’ humanities scholars who lack adequate legal knowledge, and vice versa. 67 Then, Posner has criticized the prevalence of left-wing biases. 68 Posner has also questioned why Law and Humanities scholars have neglected ‘professional’ legal questions, such as whether copyright law hinders creativity, or whether defamation law influences film-makers to cloak real-life individuals behind fictitious characters. 69
Of Posner’s criticisms, the grouse about left-wing biases can be taken with a pinch of salt. Many scholars lean left or right, and are entitled to do so. With respect to the ‘hard’ law argument, what Posner points to is a tendency within Law and Humanities to study the law in popular culture (i.e. legal themes in creative works) rather than the law of popular culture (i.e. when creative works themselves form the subject-matter of the law). Examples of the former would be analyses of the legal themes in To Kill a Mockingbird 70 or Rashomon. 71 Examples of the latter would generally cover the technical law field of entertainment law, whose origins date back to blackletter texts several decades ago. 72 In an IP context, the in law tradition can have some utility. For example, the Oscar-nominated film Joy, a biopic of the prolific patentee Joy Mangano, can help lawyers appreciate that not all inventors are trained scientists. To use another example, some scholars blame a New York Times editorial by Michael Crichton, on gene patenting, for influencing a Congressional Bill. 73 Here, one can analyse Crichton’s dystopic novel Next, on the same subject, to understand how popular fiction can influence public opinion on IP. Overall, however, law in scholarship arguably offers hard IP law scholarship much less than what law of scholarship does.
A seminal Law and Film book, in the law in tradition, has conceded that ‘traditional blackletter analysis’ can have a place within the field, but observed that entertainment lawyers ‘may not much care’ about issues beyond the law. 74 For IP scholars, this presents interesting possibilities. If Law and Humanities scholars produce more works in the law of tradition, this may lead to valuable ‘Goldilocks’ scholarship where legal analysis is complemented by perspectives from disciplines like culture and media studies. This can be a departure from blackletter entertainment law scholarship, law in popular culture scholarship, and humanities scholarship in the B-A subset. Recently, a group of Law and Film scholars—all from humanities backgrounds—have advocated precisely this. In collection of essays edited by them, they have urged Law and Humanities scholars to consider a ‘different critical direction’, which expands beyond ‘literariness’, examines ‘how the industry and culture of film are traced through legal frameworks’, and delves into ‘very real practical problems’. 75
Three essays in the above collection concern IP. Two are authored by film studies professors (Peter Decherney and Paul McDonald respectively) and the third by two law professors (Mark Bartholomew and John Tehranian). Decherney (a book by whom was cited earlier in (A ∩ B) – C) begins by recalling Thomas Jefferson’s observations on the need to balance copyright. 76 He then walks the reader through legislation and case law. He peppers this with insights on cinema and considers the law’s impact on creativity. Decherney argues, among other things, that Hollywood has suffered from ‘copyright ambivalence’, initially seeking permissiveness in reusing ideas and later the opposite. 77 He discusses, for example, a storyline-copying lawsuit where an advertisement for a bride was held to be a non-protectable plot device, and was later used in multiple films. In contrast, a court ‘over-determined Spielberg’s influence on the shark-attack genre’ by holding that the film Great White infringed the copyright of Jaws. 78 Decherney also discusses the US Supreme Court’s decisions in Eldred v. Ashcroft, 79 , and Golan v. Holder, 80 noting that the consequences of these decisions is a ‘shrinking public domain’ that leads to copyright hindering rather than fostering creativity. 81 McDonald discusses provisions of international copyright treaties and US law, along with landmark piracy cases. However, he situates this amidst a ‘hidden history’ of ‘pirate entrepreneurship’. 82 McDonald provokes debate on piracy versus access by using the example of a trial where cast members of the film Paper Moon testified to having accessed pirated copies themselves. 83
Bartholomew and Tehranian discuss the use of trademarks in films. They contrast two well-known US cases separated by a decade—Dallas Cowboys Cheerleaders v. Pussycat Cinema, 84 where a court found the use of a sports team’s trademarks in a pornographic film to be infringing, and Rogers v. Grimaldi, 85 where Ginger Rogers failed to prevent the use of her name in Federico Fellini’s film Fred and Ginger. The authors argue that the latter decision has gradually influenced US courts to be ‘film-maker-friendly’. 86 However, the authors caution that this has not prevented rights owners from frequently demanding the removal of logos from films. Among the instances they cite is one where Budweiser’s manufacturers demanded the removal of their logo from the Oscar-nominated film Flight, about an alcoholic pilot. The authors argue that while large film studios can contest lawsuits from brand owners, smaller studios may capitulate. 87 Bartholomew and Tehranian’s essay is more legalistic than the other two. Nevertheless, they have still engaged with modern cinema and addressed artistic concerns. Thus, on the whole, the three essays are good examples of how scholarship on hard IP law can blend with the humanities.
Moving on to Posner’s concern about interdisciplinary ‘amateurishness’, collaborative efforts like the above are one way to tackle this. There also exist law professors with advanced degrees in areas concerning popular culture, who practise interdisciplinarity. For example, Olufunmilayo Arewa (cited in (A ∩ B) – C)) holds a JD and a PhD in anthropology (with a thesis on popular culture). Lawrence Liang (cited in the same subset) holds law degrees and a PhD in cinema studies. Jessica Silbey (discussed in the next section) holds a JD and a PhD in comparative literature, with a thesis on trial films (i.e. in the law in tradition of Law and Humanities). But it should also be asked why humanities scholars cannot dabble in legal analysis, or vice versa, with little or no formal training. 88 For instance, despite no apparent formal legal background, Decherney has filed an amicus brief in Golan v. Holder, and also joined legal scholars in leading the venerable International Society for the History and Theory of Intellectual Property (ISHTIP). Lawrence Lessig (discussed in the next section) is regularly cited by scholars from other disciplines. The Routledge Companion to Remix Studies (cited in B–A– C, and certainly not a work of legal scholarship) even opens by crediting Lessig with inspiring the title of the book. 89 Thus, while Posner’s criticism is admittedly aimed at ‘weak’ scholars, it is problematic to interpret this as excluding the possibility of a law scholar being self-taught in another discipline, or vice versa.
Over a century ago, Oliver Wendell Holmes famously urged lawyers to look beyond blackletter law, towards disciplines like economics and statistics, and consider the ‘social advantage’ of laws. 90 In the 1920s and 1930s, the left-leaning Legal Realism school implemented such an agenda, focusing on actors ‘[b]ehind decisions’ and ‘beyond decisions’. 91 Legal Realism paved the way for two later movements strongly based on empirical research methods—Law and Society and Empirical Legal Studies. 92 The term ‘empirical’ ordinarily refers to ‘evidence about the world based on observation or experience’, which ‘can be numerical (quantitative) or non-numerical (qualitative)’. 93 Empirical Legal Studies has tended to prioritize quantitative research methods, focusing on ‘the subset of empirical legal scholarship that uses statistical techniques and analyses’. 94 In contrast, Law and Society’s founding agenda was to avoid research that is ‘blind to culture and context’. 95 While Law and Society has often resisted policy-oriented scholarship and challenged ‘received wisdom’, Empirical Legal Studies has generally been rooted in legal positivism and aimed to assist policy-makers, thus making it ‘less radical and less threatening to the legal establishment’. 96
There exists significant IP scholarship which (consciously or not) belongs to the Empirical Legal Studies 97 and Law and Society 98 fields. But is not always easy to classify IP scholarship as empirical, and then place it within one of these two subcategories. For instance, one view of empirical scholarship includes historical and cultural research, as well as ‘abstract’ scholarship. 99 Applying this, various works placed outside set C can be classified as empirical, from Lemley and McKenna’s paper on economic theories concerning trademarks (in A–B–C) to Orewa’s paper on legal and cultural aspects on sampling (in (A ∩ B) – C) . Furthermore, within empirical research, research involving behavioural economics can overlap with both Empirical Legal Studies and Law and Society. 100 The Venn diagram in this chapter has thus used the broad term ‘empirical social sciences’. For functional reasons, this includes applied social science research but not purely theoretical social science research (placed in set A). Methods used in applied social science research usually comprise statistical analysis, interviews, observations, simulations, and the use of control groups. 101 Thus, for example, Liang’s paper, which analyses aesthetic aspects of derivative films made by an indigent community in India, has been placed in the subset B–A–C. But a paper by Ishita Tiwary that draws from Liang’s work, with the added elements of visits to the community and interviews, has been placed in (B ∩ C) – A.
Among the works in set C, the extent of engagement with legal issues may vary. For instance, Fauchart and von Hippel (in C–A–B) study how chefs use norms and customs to protect recipes, while Oliar and Sprigman (in A ∩ C) – B) conduct a similar study with respect to stand-up comedians. While both papers demonstrate the limits of the law and the relevance of non-legal mechanisms, the latter indulges in legal analysis, while the former avoids this. The latter has also been published in a law journal and the former in a social sciences journal, indicating that the authors had different audiences in mind. In keeping with the premise of this chapter, the subsets of C that intersect with A (i.e. (A ∩ C) – B and (A ∩ B ∩ C)) are more directly relevant for judges and lawyers and deserve closer attention.
Of these two subsets, scholarship falling in the first does not engage closely with popular culture works. For example, Oliar and Sprigman do not critically comment on the content of jokes and comment on their social and cultural value. Similarly, the contributors to Joe Karganis’ book conduct interviews and field visits, but avoid venturing into areas like film history and criticism. Another instructive example, from the same subset, is Silbey’s book The Eureka Myth. Silbey conducts semi-structured interviews with numerous scientists, artists, and musicians, selected through non-random, stratified sampling. 102 Silbey explains that she chose an ‘exploratory’ qualitative methodology to better understand the experiences and motivations of creators. 103 Inspired by disciplines like psychology, sociology, and anthropology, she thus studies ‘lived experiences from the ground up’. 104 Silbey’s research reveals deep emotional connections between creators and their works, and challenges the ‘stunningly persistent and monolithic’ incentive-based theories of IP with evidence that creators are motivated by non-monetary motives. 105 To make her sample more representative, Silbey also interviews business professionals. 106 Alongside these empirical components, Silbey discusses legal issues. Yet, notwithstanding her training in the humanities, Silbey does not critically examine the works of her interviewees, or provide extensive historical and cultural commentary. This makes scholarship in A ∩ B ∩ C a rare hybrid.
As a starting point, Lawrence Lessig’s Remix and Free Culture are two acclaimed books that clearly belong to A ∩ B ∩ C. In Free Culture, Lessig traces how Walt Disney ‘was always parroting the feature-length mainstream films of his day’, such as Steamboat Willie (a parody of a Buster Keaton film, Steamboat Bill Jr), and how Disney’s entire catalogue contains an ‘astonishing’ amount of borrowed work. 107 Yet, through an interview with an illustrator, Lessig shows copyright law has gradually come to hinder such borrowing. 108 Thus, Lessig combines historical research with the simple empirical techniques of unstructured interviewing and ‘purposive sampling’. 109 Lessig repeats this approach elsewhere in the book. For instance, he cites a conversation with a film-maker who wished to use a clip from the Simpsons and received the consent of the show’s creator, but faced obstacles from the show’s producers. 110 Lessig combines such analysis with legal analysis, starting with the Statute of Anne and Donaldson v. Beckett, 111 and moving on to the Copyright Term Extension Act and Eldred v. Ashcroft, 112 where Lessig was closely involved. 113 In Remix, Lessig uses a similar approach. In the opening chapter, he recalls being ‘overwhelmed with emotion’ on watching a video installation comprising passionate fan tributes to John Lennon. 114 Interviewing the creator, Lessig reveals how she faced copyright objections from Yoko Ono and Sony. 115 In the same chapter, Lessig interviews other artists with similar experiences. Lessig goes on to make policy suggestions to facilitate derivative works, such as an ‘amateur remix’ exception. 116
A handful of similar books and papers have since been published. One example is the book Creative Licence by Kembrew McLeod and Peter DiCola (professors of law and communication studies respectively), which discusses sampling. The authors claim inspiration from a call for greater interdisciplinary research by Ronald Coase, the Nobel Prize-winning economist and pioneer of Law and Economics. 117 The authors emphasize the need for ‘approaches that pay close attention to history, culture, technology, media, law and economy’, while involving ‘empirical research that involves talking to people who have a direct stake in these matters’. 118 The authors employ approaches ranging from historical analysis to case law analysis to economic analysis—arguing, for example, that albums by Public Enemy and the Beastie Boys would not have been ‘commercially practical to release’ had licences for all sampled material been obtained, as the bands would ‘pay out more than they receive’. 119 The book contains interviews with scores of experts, from renowned musicians to music company executives to legal scholars. The authors also discuss policy reform.
A second example is a paper, by Aaron Perzanowski, on how the tattoo industry uses community IP norms. 120 Perzanowski discusses the history of tattooing, along with contemporary trends. He also discusses the low scope for copyright protection available to tattooists, referencing statutes, case law, and scholarly opinion. The empirical component of Perzanowski’s paper (its standout feature) comprises semi-structured interviews with tattoo artists, documenting how passionately they feel about their work, how they feel about copying (some consider imitation as flattery, for example), and how they assert claims of authorship in the absence of legal protection.
A third example is a book, by Marta Iljadica, on graffiti art. 121 Iljadica begins by discussing historical and aesthetic matters concerning graffiti art. She moves on to discuss legal issues in considerable detail, and concludes with suggested copyright reforms. The meat of Iljadica’s work, though, comprises semi-structured interviews and fieldwork, conducted in London. Iljadica purports to follow a ‘grounded theory’ approach. 122 Here, her research resembles Silbey’s and Perzanowski’s. However, unlike Silbey or Perzanowski, Iljadica studies what is an ‘illegal subculture’. 123 Here, Iljadica raises some important ethical issues, such as that of keeping the identities of many interviewees anonymous. 124 She also declares that her ‘sympathies were already engaged with graffiti writers’, and that it is possible for researchers to ‘take sides’ according with their political beliefs without making their research biased. 125
Assessing the above works, there is no doubt that Lessig has been an early pioneer of scholarship falling within the intersecting subsets of set C. However, Lessig’s books are written in accessible language and aimed towards both lawyers and a broader general readership. In comparison, the publications by Silbey, McLeod and DiCola, and Iljadica show a conscious attempt to maintain methodological rigour, along with reflections on methodology and interdisciplinarity. This perhaps makes them more suitable templates for researchers prioritizing sophisticated research methods. Nevertheless, legal scholars should certainly consider the merits of reach out to a broader readership, and the dichotomy of IP and popular culture scholarship being divorced from a popular readership.
Through an inexact categorization, I have tried to emphasize that interdisciplinary IP and popular culture scholarship, drawing from the humanities and empirical social sciences, can complement conventional legal analysis. The future of such scholarship holds much promise. In terms of research topics, fan films, internet memes, and the use of artificial intelligence to create works can all be exciting areas. I wish to conclude with a few thoughts on the role that scholars from developing countries can play, in a field dominated by Western scholars. Most developing countries lag behind the West in science and technology, and generate far fewer patents (China being a notable exception). However, many developing countries are home to vibrant creative industries, such as China, Brazil, India, Iran, and Nigeria. In some areas, such as moral rights or traditional cultural expressions, developing countries even have more robust laws than in the US.
A day before the workshop charting the course of this book I was privileged to attend a colloquium for IP scholars from developing countries in Asia, organized by the WIPO and WTO, 126 which culminated in a collection of essays. 127 At the colloquium, and in some of the essays, scholars spoke of various difficulties facing them, from inadequate funding to high teaching workloads. In such circumstances, it may become challenging for developing country scholars to produce research on IP and popular culture. In countries where the role of law schools is primarily to fulfil job market requirements, such scholarship may be viewed as a luxury. Here, one can look with some trepidation towards Britain. Some years ago, the then British higher education minister, Margaret Hodge, criticized British universities for offering ‘Mickey Mouse courses’ supposedly lacking intellectual rigour and not being tailored towards the job market. 128 The remark was perceived as being targeted towards popular culture courses in humanities departments. Conservative sections of the British press, such as the Daily Telegraph and the Daily Mail, have since repeatedly borrowed Hodge’s expression and attacked universities offering popular culture courses. 129 It is possible that a similar view can find currency in developing countries, where most universities are state-funded and employment challenges are much greater than in Britain. One thus hopes that organizations like WIPO, WTO, and UNESCO can impress upon governments and universities in developing countries to support IP and popular culture research, and that cultural and creative industries can also see value in such research.
