The Boundaries of Intellectual Property Law
February 6-7, 2009
College of William & Mary - Marshall-Wythe School of Law
Williamsburg, Virginia
As the scope of intellectual property law continues to expand, courts and scholars are increasingly confronting the question of the law’s proper boundaries. Is it appropriate, for example, for content
owners to use copyright law to silence unflattering speech? Are countries’ trademark laws, which historically have been geographically limited, now essentially global trademark laws given Internet commerce? Is it consistent with the goals of patent law for the U.S. government, through the Patent and Trademark Office, to define the boundaries of what is patentable based on moral or other
non-innovation-related criteria? Is it important to cabin various IP doctrines to prevent overlap? Although such issues have been the topic of debate in the past, this symposium will provide the
opportunity for participants to take a systemic approach to the boundary question, yielding new scholarship that directly addresses the question of the proper goals of IP law and whether the scope of
our current system aligns with those goals.
Please contact Laura A. Heymann, laheym@wm.edu, for more information
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