Overkill or opportunity? Four IP titles from OUP
IPKat - IP news and fun for everyone: Oxford University Press is now publishing no fewer than four titles on intellectual property law. Is this commercial suicide or genuine prudence? The IPKat thinks it’s the latter. If you run a bakery and make your money selling cakes, it makes sense to offer a selection of different products — even though to an economist they may appear to be substitutable for one another — because the taste of one customer may not be that of another. Likewise, clothes shops must offer a degree of choice that matches the physical needs as well as the fashion preferences of its patrons.
This message is equally important for publishers. The relationship of a reader with a book is more intimate than that of a consumer with his cakes or a customer buying clothes. This is because, while the joys of a cake are fleeting, and clothes wear out or become otherwise unfit for service, the law book imparts something of its content, and of its author’s thoughts, that may remain with the reader forever. Old cakes are jettisoned if uneaten; unfashionable clothes are taken to the jumble sale or charity shop, or turned into rags for polishing shoes or cars — but books are so often lovingly cherished and stored for years before they are even opened, then preserved and stored after they have been read. The point is this: a book and its reader must have an enriching relationship, and what is congenial to one reader is anathema to another. That it is why it is so wise of OUP to offer such a wide selection of current IP titles: love one, loathe another, but OUP will service your every need.
The four books listed below are not in any sense being reviewed by the…