Intellectual Property Society

New Section of IP Licensing & Drafting

A new section of IP Licensing & Drafting that focuses on technology has been added for the Spring 2007 semester.  The course will meet on five Fridays (1/26, 2/2, 2/23, 3/16 and 3/23) from 9-2.  We are fortunate to have been able to hire Terry Illardi who is Copyright Counsel for IBM.   Mr. Illardi is also chairman of the Intellectual Property Owners Assocation Open Source Committee since its inception in 2001 and is an advisor to the American Law Institute's Principles of the Law of Software Contracts project.

If you are interested in registering for this course, please go into EZ Info and register for crn 11847.

Upcoming State of Play Academy Classes

Details at: http://stateofplayacademy.com/course/view.php?id=11

--

Thursday Oct 5, 2006 5:30-6:30 PM PST
Campaigns Caught in the Web

Teacher: Jennifer Granick, Wired News Columnist and Executive Director, Center for Internet and Society

Elected officials, and those who wish to be elected, can't seem to figure out how to use this darn "internet". This class will look at recent campaign foibles, from the "hacking" of the Joe Lieberman for Senate website, California Governor Arnold Schwartzenegger's uploading his unguarded conversations with his speech writers to a webserver, the resignation of Democrat Amy Klobuchar's communications director after a blogger sent her an unaired TV attack ad from the opponent's campaign for the Minnesota Senate seat, and the resignation of New Hampshire Congressman Charles Bass' aide after disclosures that he posed as a supporter of the Republican's opponent in blog messages intended to convince people that the race was not competitive. We will look at the laws that govern access to andpublication of information, and how those laws apply in the crucible of the American campaign season.

---

Tuesday Oct 10, 2006 5:30-6:30 PM PST
Patentable Subject Matter: The Problem of the Absent Gatekeeper

Teacher: David Olson, Center for Internet and Society Fellow

The federal courts used to act as gatekeepers who determined which sorts of inventions (which "subject matter" in patent-speak) should be patentable and which should not. The clear theory underlying this role was that some sorts of inventions simply should not be patentable. With the advent of computer software and the information age, however, the courts faced an assault on their old tests for whether a type of subject matter should be patentable. The courts reacted to this assault by abandoning the barricades and allowing patentability for virtually any sort of invention.

David Olson will present a lecture based on his paper arguing that the courts should have kept to the barricades, and that if they won'tremount them, then Congress should delegate the patentable subject matter gatekeeper role to someone who will.

---

Thursday October 12, 2006 5:30-6:30 PM PST
NSA Warrentless Surveillance Cases and the Impact of New Legislation

Teacher: Kevin Bankston,  Electronic Frontier Foundation

Kevin Bankston will discuss the law and technology of the National Security Agency's domestic surveillance program, giving updates on EFF's current lawsuit against AT&T for cooperating with the NSA and on the progress of other litigation and legislation relevant to the government's telephone and Internet surveillance powers.