Editorial
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| DOI: 10.2966/scrip.010104.1 | ||
When at the outset of his career the great American lawyer and orator Daniel Webster (1782-1852) was asked why he was entering the already over-crowded profession of law, he replied, “There’s always room at the top!”
It’s with the same kind of ambition and determination that SCRIPT-ed is joining the ever-growing ranks of online journals devoted to intellectual property and technology law. And when I was reflecting on how journals get to the top, I found a few phrases, from whence I just can’t think, flowing out of my random access memory – or could they have been pasted in from “saved phrases”? Anyway, they seemed to catch what the establishment of this student-led and written journal already shows, as well as what it will do in the future to claim its place at the top of the Google hit list.
Here are those phrases, in no particular order, and long may all of them be true of SCRIPT-ed:
new
- inventive
- not obvious
- not commonplace
- state of the art
- original
- skill and labour
- intellectual creation
- spark of creativity
- works of the mind
- capable of distinguishing
- fair dealing
- criticism, review and news reporting
- public policy
- public interest
Perhaps I should add at the end, with a little luck, not so far as I know a phrase found in any IP or IT legislation, but expounded in a song of that name by Paul McCartney (b. 1942, yet still with us). Sorry to end by being so-ooo 1970s (apologies to Graeme Laurie in particular).
Hector MacQueen
Professor of Private Law
Director, ahrc Research
Centre for Studies in Intellectual Property and Technology Law
Edinburgh Law School
University of Edinburgh