The Colloquium on Technology, Innovation and Intellectual Property Policy, directed by Professor Graeme Austin continues throughout the fall semester at the Rogers College of Law.

An exciting recent teaching and learning innovation at the James E. Rogers College of Law has been the Technology, Innovation and Intellectual Property Colloquium.  This Colloquium, which in previous years has been team taught with David Adelman,, exposes students to some of the latest scholarship in the intellectual property law and technology fields.  Professors from around the United States are invited to visit and present new works-in-progress.  Previous Colloquium sessions focused on topics as diverse as: digital archiving, network analysis of patent citations, the obviousness standard in patent law, trademark policies, and public-private partnerships in the delivery of pharmaceuticals in third-world nations.  In the weeks leading up to the presentations, Professor Austin works with colloquium students on the primary and secondary material relevant to the presentations, and this equips the students to engage fully with the cutting edge work presented by the visiting scholars.  As Professor Austin notes, “New scholarship in the intellectual property field doesn’t emerge from a vacuum.  This field of the law has a deep intellectual tradition, and the Colloquium provides an exciting opportunity to expose students to some of the ways that new ideas about the future shape of this area of the law emerge.  The Colloquium is a wonderful vehicle for encouraging students to engage in sophisticated thinking about IP and technology issues that affect all our lives.”

September 10:“Anti-Branding” Professor Sonia Katyal, Fordham University Law School. Professor Katyal teaches in the areas of intellectual property, property and civil rights. Before coming to Fordham, Professor Katyal was an associate specializing in intellectual property litigation in the San Francisco office of Covington & Burling. Prof. Katyal's scholarly work focuses on intellectual property, civil rights, and new media. Her current projects study the relationship between copyright enforcement and privacy (as applied to peer-to-peer technology); and the impact of artistic expression and parody on corporate identity, advertising, and brand equity.

October 8: "Supra-Constitutional Copyright" Prof. Ruth Okediji, Univ. of Minnesota School of Law. Professor Ruth Okediji is one of the leading authorities in the United States on International Intellectual Property Law. After visiting at the University of Minnesota in 2001, Professor Okediji joined the Minnesota faculty in the 2002-2003 academic year. She served on the faculty at the University of Oklahoma College of Law from 1994 to 2002, where she held the Edith Kinney Gaylord Presidential Professorship.

October 22: "Pharma's Nonobvious Problem"Rebecca Eisenberg, Univ. of Michigan School of Law.  Rebecca S. Eisenberg is a graduate of Stanford University and Boalt Hall School of Law at the University of California, Berkeley, where she was articles editor of the California Law Review. Following law school she served as law clerk for Chief Judge Robert F. Peckham on the United States District Court for the Northern District of California and then practiced law as a litigator in San Francisco.

November 19: “Separating the Sony Sheep from the Grokster Goats: Reckoning the Future Business Plans of Copyright-Dependent Technology Entrepreneurs” Professor Jane C. Ginsburg, Columbia University Law School,.Morton L. Janklow Professor of Literary and Artistic Property Law. Law clerk to Judge John J. Gibbons, U.S. Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit, 1980-81. Spent three years in private practice before teaching. Co-director, Kernochan Center for Law, Media and the Arts, 1999-present. Serves on the editorial boards of several intellectual property journals in the United States and abroad. Principal areas of interest are in intellectual property, comparative law, private international law, and legal methods.

About the Colloquium Directors:

Professor David AdelmanProfessor of Law David E. Adelman received a B.A. from Reed College, and a Ph.D. in physics and J.D. from Stanford University. He was a clerk for the U.S. District Court in San Francisco, a law firm associate and a senior attorney with the Natural Resources Defense Council before joining the University of Arizona faculty. He teaches law and sciences, patent law, environmental law, environmental law advocacy, and a survey course in intellectual property.  His research explores the interface between law and science, and he has recently published a major empirical study of patents in the biotech industry.

Professor Graeme AustinJ. Byron McCormick Professor Graeme Austin received B.A., LL.B. and LL.M. degrees from Victoria University in New Zealand and an LL.M. and S.J.D. from Columbia. He taught and practiced law in New Zealand before joining the faculty at the University of Arizona, where he teaches and writes in the areas of international intellectual property law, trademarks and unfair competition. He has served as an advisor to the American Law Institute Project on Intellectual Property, Principles Governing Jurisdiction, Choice of Law, and Judgments in Transnational Disputes, and has addressed the World Intellectual Property Organization on cross-border IP issues. He is an author of International Intellectual Property Cases and Materials (2d ed. with Dinwoodie, Hennessey & Perlmutter, forthcoming 2008) and is currently working on a new book on Human Rights and Intellectual Property (Cambridge University Press, forthcoming 2009).

Legal practitioners and UA students and faculty are warmly invited to attend Colloquium sessions at which visiting professors will present their work.  Space is very limited, so please contact Donna Ream, ream@law.arizona.edu if you would like to attend. All sessions run 5.00-6.50 p.m.