FOREWORD

A revolution has occurred in the technology of information and communication since the publication of the first edition of Breach of Confidence over a quarter of a century ago. The capacity to store, to process, and to distribute data has increased prodigiously, as has the range of devices available to consume or to communicate data. The world is connected by vast volumes of data. One study, in 2002, estimated that five exabytes of new data were produced in that year, the equivalent of the contents of half a million Libraries of Congress. One can wonder, as T.S. Eliot did in 1934 in The Rock, Where is the wisdom we have lost in knowledge? Where is the knowledge we have lost in information?. And one could add, Where is the information we have lost in data?.

Building on A Mathematical Theory of Communication , the classic work of Claude Shannon published in 1948, the science of information is largely mathematical and our measures of information are largely quantitative. Where do we turn to find the qualitative value of information? The law is one such place. It recognizes that, even if less than knowledge, information is more than data and its transmission or sharing can have significant economic, social, and political consequences.

The development of the law of confidence has been prescient in a number of ways. The courts recognized in Prince Albert v Strange that an etching contained information before creative expressions started to migrate to a digital form. They recognized in Franklin v Giddins that a fruit tree contained genetic information before science was able to decipher the trees genome and reveal that information.

I was privileged to stumble on the law of confidence as a doctoral student and to live in contemplation of its development as only doctoral students and hermits are able to behold a subject. I have not been able to return to such an environment since then, which makes me full of admiration for Tanya Aplin, Lionel Bently, Phillip Johnson, and Simon Malynicz. Each of the authors of the second edition lives a life full of professional challenges and responsibilities. That they have been able to undertake the enormous task of absorbing more than 25 years of case law emanating from a rapidly evolving social, economic, and technological context, and of expressing it in an ordered and accessible manner, is remarkable. That they associate my name with their efforts is a gesture of great generosity. I am deeply grateful to them.

Technology has made information precarious. That vulnerability extends to the manifold relationships formed around the exchange of information. I am convinced these developments reinforce the relevance and the importance of the law of confidence. The authors of this second edition are to be thanked for having produced an outstanding work that demonstrates this relevance and importance.

Francis Gurry
Director General, World Intellectual Property Organization