Contribution of Journal of Intellectual Property Rights (JIPR) in IPR Research: A View through the Articles Published in the Last Decade of Twentieth-Century (1996–1999) — I

Abstract

This paper seeks to review the articles published in the Journal of Intellectual Property Rights (JIPR) in the last decade of the twentieth century from Volume 1(1) (1996) to Volume 4(6) (1999). There are seven intellectual property (IP) statutes in force in India. When JIPR published its first Volume in the year 1996, only two IP statutes, legislated and enacted in post-independent India, were in force, namely: (i) The Copyright Act, 1957; and (ii) The Patents Act, 1970 — enacted after 10 years and 23 years respectively after the independence of the country. Nevertheless, the Imperial Act on designs was also in force by the virtue of Article 372 of the Constitution of India, until the Indian Parliament enacted a separate statute on designs. Two statutes were enacted in 1999 and the other three statutes were enacted in the first decade of the 21st century but some of them took a time of almost a decade to come into force. For convenience, the papers published in JIPR have been reviewed year-wise. Paper attempts to identify the: (i) total number of issues published; (ii) total number of articles published; (iii) total number of contributions made by the Indian and foreign scholars; (iv) total number of sole and joint publications; (v) publishing style of JIPR; and (vi) area of IP covered in the publications. JIPR since its inception has aimed to fill void in the IP literature in general and the Indian IP literature in particular. Paper develops an argument that JIPR has significantly contributed in the dissemination of IP information and knowledge, and also in creating IP knowledge and awareness by publishing quality research articles on an open access platform.