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Sy-Stem-Ic Bias: An Exploration Of Gender And Race Representation On University Patents, Jordana Goodman
Sy-Stem-Ic Bias: An Exploration Of Gender And Race Representation On University Patents, Jordana Goodman
Faculty Scholarship
People of color and women are underrepresented in science, technology, engineering and math (“STEM”) fields in the United States. Through both intentional and unintentional structural barriers, universities continue to lose valuable intellectual resources by perpetuating a lack of gender, racial, and ethnic diversity as people climb the academic ladder. Identifying racial and gender disparities between university campus populations and their patent representation quantifies the qualitatively observed systemic racism and sexism plaguing STEM. Although many have written about racial and gender underrepresentation in STEM, no author has ever endeavored to simultaneously quantify the racial and gender gap at universities in the …
People Not Machines: Authorship And What It Means In International Copyright Law, Jane C. Ginsburg
People Not Machines: Authorship And What It Means In International Copyright Law, Jane C. Ginsburg
Faculty Scholarship
This chapter recapitulates Professor Ricketson’s analysis in his 1992 Manges Lecture at Columbia Law School, presciently titled 'People or Machines: The Berne Convention and the Changing Concept of Authorship'. As Ricketson systematically developed the inquiry, it became clear that ‘People or Machines’ in fact meant ‘People Not Machines’. This chapter considers whether, more than twenty-five years later, subsequent technological developments warrant reconsideration of the human authorship premise underlying the Berne Convention. If that premise holds firm, the next question is whether non-human-generated outputs require some form of intellectual property protection. Any such regime, it should be noted, would fall outside …
Existential Copyright And Professional Photography, Jessica Silbey, Eva Subotnik, Peter Dicola
Existential Copyright And Professional Photography, Jessica Silbey, Eva Subotnik, Peter Dicola
Faculty Scholarship
Intellectual property law has intended benefits, but it also carries certain costs — deliberately so. Skeptics have asked: Why should intellectual property law exist at all? To get traction on that overly broad but still important inquiry, we decided to ask a new, preliminary question: What do creators in a particular industry actually use intellectual property for? In this first-of-its-kind study, we conducted thirty-two in-depth qualitative interviews of photographers about how copyright law functions within their creative and business practices. By learning the actual functions of copyright law on the ground, we can evaluate and contextualize existing theories of intellectual …
Promoting Progress: A Qualitative Analysis Of Creative And Innovative Production, Jessica Silbey
Promoting Progress: A Qualitative Analysis Of Creative And Innovative Production, Jessica Silbey
Faculty Scholarship
This chapter is based on data collected as part of a larger qualitative empirical study based on face-to-face interviews with artists, scientists, engineers, their lawyers, agents and business partners. Broadly, the project involves the collecting and analysis of these interviews to understand how and why the interviewees create and innovate and to make sense of the intersection between intellectual property law and creative and innovative activity from the ground up. This chapter specifically investigates the concept of “progress” as discussed in the interviews. “Promoting progress” is the ostensible goal of the intellectual property protection in the United States, but what …
The Rhetoric Of Intellectual Property: Copyright Law And The Regulation Of Digital Culture, By Jessica Reyman (Book Review), Jessica Silbey
The Rhetoric Of Intellectual Property: Copyright Law And The Regulation Of Digital Culture, By Jessica Reyman (Book Review), Jessica Silbey
Faculty Scholarship
A short book review of Jessica Reyman’s, The Rhetoric of Intellectual Property: Copyright Law and the Regulation of Digital Culture.
Patent Thickets: Strategic Patenting Of Complex Technologies, James Bessen
Patent Thickets: Strategic Patenting Of Complex Technologies, James Bessen
Faculty Scholarship
Patent race models assume that an innovator wins the only patent covering a product. But when technologies are complex, this property right is defective: ownership of a product's technology is shared, not exclusive. In that case I show that if patent standards are low, firms build "thickets" of patents, especially incumbent firms in mature industries. When they assert these patents, innovators are forced to share rents under cross-licenses, making R&D incentives sub-optimal. On the other hand, when lead time advantages are significant and patent standards are high, firms pursue strategies of "mutual non-aggression." Then R&D incentives are stronger, even optimal.
Symposium: Patent Rights And Licensing, Michael S. Baram, Ashley Stevens, Thomas Meyers, Michael J. Meurer
Symposium: Patent Rights And Licensing, Michael S. Baram, Ashley Stevens, Thomas Meyers, Michael J. Meurer
Faculty Scholarship
This panel will discuss intellectual property - the patent incentive, patentability issues, licensing, and litigation-related matters. It will be moderated by Dr. Ashley Stevens, the Director of the Office of Technology Transfer at Boston University. Ashley has multiple degrees, including a doctorate in physical chemistry from Oxford University. He has worked in the biotech industry for a number of years, mostly with startup companies and academic research organizations such as the Dana Farber Cancer Institute, where he was also Director of Technology Transfer. Ashley was instrumental in the startup and operations of firms such as Biotechnica International, and started his …
The Legal Infrastructure Of High Technology Industrial Districts: Silicon Valley, Route 128, And Covenants Not To Compete, Ronald J. Gilson
The Legal Infrastructure Of High Technology Industrial Districts: Silicon Valley, Route 128, And Covenants Not To Compete, Ronald J. Gilson
Faculty Scholarship
In recent years, scholars and policymakers have rediscovered the concept of industrial districts – spatial concentrations of firms in the same industry or related industries. In this Article, Professor Gilson examines te relationship between high-technology industrial districts and legal infrastructure by comparing the legal regimes of California's Silicon Valley and Massachusetts's Route 128. He contends that legal rides governing employee mobility influence the dynamics of high technology industrial districts by either encouraging rapid employee movement between employers and to startups, as in Silicon Valley, or discouraging such movement, as in Route 128. Because California does not enforce post-employment covenants not …