The Boundaries of Intellectual Property
Sponsored by the Institute of Bill of Rights Law
College of William & Mary, Marshall-Wythe School of Law
Williamsburg, Virginia
February 6–7, 2009
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 have historically been geographically limited, now essentially global trademark laws given the use of marks over the Internet? 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? Although such questions have been the topic of debate in the past, there has not yet been an attempt to take a systemic, unifying approach to the question of boundaries in IP law. This symposium will provide the opportunity for participants to do just that, 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.
Scheduled to Participate:
Margo Bagley, University of Virginia School of Law
Dan Burk, University of California at Irvine School of Law
Julie Cohen, Georgetown University Law Center
Graeme Dinwoodie, Chicago-Kent College of Law
John Duffy, George Washington University Law School
Brett Frischmann, Loyola University Chicago School of Law
Wendy Gordon, Boston University School of Law
Mark Lemley, Stanford Law School
Jessica Litman, University of Michigan Law School
Mark McKenna, Notre Dame Law School
Michael Meurer, Boston University School of Law
Pam Samuelson, Berkeley Law School
Rebecca Tushnet, Georgetown University Law Center
Registration questions? E-mail ibrl@wm.edu.
Other questions? E-mail Laura Heymann at laheym@wm.edu.
