Well that was quite a hiatus. Almost a year to the day with no posts, and I’m now at another BILETA conference – this time, my last. Which is not to say that I’ve had nothing to say for a year. Perhaps it would be best to say that energies have been put to other projects, other directions. At any rate, apologies to all three of my regular readers – I promise to do better on posting!
But back to BILETA2022. We’re at Exeter University Law School, at the invitation of Assoc Prof James Griffin, whose book on creativity and 3 & 4D printing is a fascinating read. The conference theme is indeed creativity which is a great topic for a conference where innovation and regulation are key topics. I quote it in my keynote, tomorrow – more of that later.
The first keynote though is by Uma Suthersanen, Queen Mary, U of London, on ‘Creativity and capital as fictitious commodities within an intellectual property framework.’ It’s a fascinating overview of the evolution of IP through the medieval and modern periods, as viewed through the lens of Karl Polanyi’s economic and cultural theories of production and reproduction – particularly how (if I’ve understood it right) Polanyi’s motivation ethos is effective in synthesising the different mapping points to create a pointilliste landscape.. I’m no IP scholar but the range and variety of sources that Uma referenced and drew into her argument was quite breath-taking. And I began to see lines of similarity between some of what I will be talking about later. For example she noted how the bifurcating discou
rse landscape of IP law protects and rewards creativity vs rewards capital. I take the example of a distilling case study, where the real, worked landscape (Pictish, Viking, Gaelic, Scottish) is essential to the creativity of the distillers at Torabhaig. The development of that landscape was essential to the development of the dun that became the castle, then farm that became the distillery that hosted the Journeyman’s Dram project – well, at least a version of Polanyian embeddness…. Uma’s conclusions are in the photo of her slides, below.