June 1-2: University of Hawai'i at Mānoa

Workshop Description

Prior to the information age, intellectual property (IP) laws underwent change at a relatively slow and deliberative pace, often taking decades. Over time, intellectual property laws slowly evolved as technologies that impact innovation and creativity have changed, often simply extending the same type of protection for previous works to new areas of art and commerce. The Internet, the biotech revolution, computers and the increasing importance of abstract ideas have led to a fairly radical transformation in the perceived importance of intellectual property. Today, controversial new permutations to the law are introduced and debated in each Congressional session and there has been a corresponding sea change in IP-related laws around the globe, all indicators of the importance IP will play in the formation of the future global political economy. There has also developed a growing resistance to the further expansion of IP and the evolution of alternative models that emphasize collaboration, sharing, and open access without the law playing as significant a role.
 
Given that IP laws will establish the rules for the future, this workshop is designed to focus on just what that future ought to be. The intent of the workshop is to help inspire contributions for a book project on the Future of Intellectual Property that will assess and explore issues of intellectual property and the trends and emerging issues that are important to deal with regarding the law. As the Hawaii Research Center for Futures Studies says, "any useful statement about the future should seem ridiculous" and this workshop will attempt to move participants well beyond the business as usual scenario of incremental legal change. Instead, we would like to focus on possible futures that can offer a variety of different paths for intellectual property laws to take.
 
Participants do not have to come with a pre-prepared paper but they do need to participate with the intent of contributing to the construction of futures scenarios that are as far out there as we can make them. Also, we hope that participants at the workshop will contribute to a volume on the Future of Intellectual Property to be published as a result of the workshop. We hope participants will come willing to think and be inspired by the many possibilities that can exist for IP futures and think through how current trends and emerging issues might bring us there.

For more information, contact Debora Halbert at halbert@hawaii.edu.

Workshop Organizers

• Prof. Deborah J. Halbert, Department of Political Science, University of Hawai'i at Mānoa
• Prof. Peter K. Yu, Drake University Law School

Confirmed Participants

• Prof. Olufunmilayo B. Arewa, University of California, Irvine School of Law
• Prof. Boatema Boateng, Department of Communication, University of California San Diego
• Prof. M. Scott Boone, Appalachian School of Law
• Prof. Jeremy de Beer, Faculty of Law, University of Ottawa (Canada)
• Prof. Llewellyn Joseph Gibbons, University of Toledo College of Law
• Prof. Christoph-Beat Graber, School of Law, University of Lucerne (Switzerland)
• Prof. Deborah J. Halbert, Department of Political Science, University of Hawai'i at Mānoa
• Prof. Sonia Katyal, Fordham University School of Law
• Dr. Stefan Larsson, Department of Sociology of Law, Lund University (Sweden)
• Prof. David S. Levine, Elon University School of Law
• Prof. Benjamin Liu, John Marshall Law School
• Prof. Emily Michiko Morris, Indiana University School of Law--Indianapolis
• Prof. Rostam J. Neuwirth, Faculty of Law, University of Macau
• Prof. A. Christal Sheppard, University of Nebraska College of Law
• Prof. Brad Sherman, Faculty of Law, Griffith University (Australia)
• Prof. Peter K. Yu, Drake University Law School