And as I argue in my piece From Trademarks to Brands which just came out in the Florida Law Review, brands are not the same thing as the legal conception of trademarks. They are much more. The idea started to percolate as I worked on my paper with Spencer Waller. As I followed cites and fell in love with Princeton’s library, I found a rich set of scholarship by folks such as Marcel Danesi, Paul Duguid, Naomi Klein, Celia Lury, Liz Moor, Susan Strasser, Tilde Heding, and many others who have dug into brands and branding. The focus on the distinction between brands and trademarks seems to be growing. While I was at Google, I presented my paper at UC Davis. It turns out that Mario Biagioli, Anupam Chander, and Madhavi Sunder are into the investigation. In fact, they have a conference called Brand New World: Distinguishing Oneself in the Global Flow coming up October 4-5 at UC Davis. I love the way the meeting brings scholars from a range fo fields together. When Shubha Ghosh and I built the Intergenerational Equity and Intellectual Property Symposium, we strove to get a mix of speakers so that disciplines were thrown together in a way that might yield some new perspectives. Shubha was a great partner in kicking ideas for panels and names around. I think this conference takes a similar approach. You can see the full descriptions of panels at the web site but here is a shorter version just so you can see the different perspectives that will be there. Hope to see folks at the event. But please RSVP.
Tactics of Distinction in the Global Flow
Barton Beebe (Law, NYU), Dev Gangjee (Law, London School of Economics), Sonia Katyal (Law, Fordham), James Leach (Anthropology, University of Aberdeen), Cori Hayden (Anthropology, UC Berkeley), Celia Lury (Sociology, University of London), Madhavi Sunder (Law, UC Davis)
Feeling Good by Buying Good(s): From Dolphin-Safe to Do No Evil
Nicole Aylwin (York University), Rosemary Coombe (York University), Evelyn Lincoln (Art History, Brown University), Maggie Chon (Law, Seattle University), Haochen Sun (Law, University of Hong Kong), Kriss Ravetto (Technocultural Studies, UC Davis)
From Signatures to Trademarks: Seals, Stamps, Brands
Gary Richardson (Economics & NBER, UC Irvine), Dagmar Schäfer (History of Science, Max Planck Institute), Heinrich von Staden (History,Institute for Advanced Study, Princeton), Paul Duguid (School of Information, UC Berkeley), Colin Milburn (English, UC Davis)
Function Creep: Hybrids at the Borders of Trademarks
Alain Pottage (Law, London School of Economics), Lionel Bentley (Law, Cambridge University)
Mark Lemley (Law, Stanford), Stacey Dogan (Law, Boston University), Mario Biagioli (STS & Law, UC Davis)
The Medium is the Brand
Deven Desai (Law, Thomas Jefferson), Graeme Dinwoodie (Law, Oxford University), Peter Menell (Law, UC Berkeley), Anupam Chander (Law, UC Davis)