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Greetings from the Center

Mark Janis The spring semester is now under way, the Center for IP Research has planned a very full schedule of events (see listing nearby). Scholars, practitioners, and a distinguished senior judge from the Federal Circuit will be visiting Bloomington, and you are very welcome to attend any or all of these events. Indiana continuing legal education credit will be available at no charge.

Do you know of any undergraduate students who may be interested in IP law? The market for IP lawyers continues to be strong.  However, a number of students, especially those studying engineering and the sciences, either don't see how their undergrad studies might connect to a career as a lawyer, or are discouraged by the widespread negative publicity about law practice generally. If you know of students who might benefit from some guidance on potential IP careers, please let me know, and I will be glad to follow up with them.

I look forward to seeing you at our events this semester.
Mark D. Janis, JD'89
Robert A. Lucas Chair of Law

 

Save the date:  
IP and the Arts conference set for May 15-16 in Indianapolis   

The Center for IP Research, in collaboration with the Indiana Arts Commission and the Jacobs School of Music, is holding a conference in Indianapolis on May 15-16 titled "Leveraging Creativity: Entrepreneurial Skills in the Arts and Intellectual Property Rights." The first day of the conference is aimed at helping artists and arts organizations develop the entrepreneurial skills they need to leverage their creative work.  The second day will be devoted to a symposium on copyright issues in the performing and visual arts, featuring some of the country's leading copyright law scholars and practitioners.

"We're thrilled to have the opportunity to help organize this
Leaffer
Leaffer
event," said Marshall Leaffer, Distinguished Scholar in Intellectual Property Law and University Fellow. "It's an ideal mix of topics: we'll cover practical questions of IP law that artists commonly face, and we'll also consider some of copyright law's most complex technical puzzles."   

Registration will be available in early March. Subscribers to IP News will receive a save-the-date notice and additional information in mid-February. Leaffer and Adjunct Professor Robert Meitus are among those coordinating the event on behalf of the Center. The Center expects to publish papers from the symposium in a special issue of IP Theory, the Center's online journal IP Theory. More information will be forthcoming on the Center's website.

This project is partially supported by Indiana University's New Frontiers in the Arts & Humanities Program.
Big data, big issues 

Mattioli
Mattioli
The term "big data" is attracting a lot of attention in the academic and popular press, and one of the Center's experts is capitalizing on the trend.

Associate Professor Michael Mattioli is joining forces with Hamid Ekbia, Cassidy Sugimoto, and Inna Kouper at IU's Center for Research on Mediated Interaction ("CROMI") to study this new phenomenon's impact on science and innovation. They presented a schematic of big data's uses and implications at the inauguration ceremony of IU's School of Informatics and Computing on September 27, 2013.

"Big data is not a monolith," Mattioli explained, "but rather, a set of practices and processes that use large amounts of data for some purpose other than originally intended." Mattioli provides an example in an article he is writing. "In 2009, the H1N1 virus was spreading faster than the knowledge about it," he explained. "Google discovered that most people who searched their site for the word 'flu' were experiencing symptoms and looking for help. Google converted this pre-existing data into a system for mapping the progress of the virus across the country. This is a classic example of how institutions are using pre-existing data in a new and
unexpected ways."

Mattioli pointed out that big data raises many IP-related issues in the areas of trade secrets, patents, and copyright. His research on the intersection of IP and big data is a novel perspective, one that will set the pace for policymaking in the years ahead. With support from the Center, Mattioli and his collaborators are working on editing a series of papers on the institutional governance of big data that a prominent academic publisher has signaled interest in publishing.
Center files amicus brief in U.S. Supreme Court case 

The Center for IP Research has filed an amicus curiae brief in support of a petition for writ of certiorari in Kimble v. Marvel Enterprises. The brief challenges the Court's decision in Brulotte v. Thys Co., a 1964 case holding that post-expiration royalties in patent licenses are unlawful per se. The brief urges that the Court should reconsider the Brulotte rule because it frustrates public policy, and because it is out of step with the Court's current economics-based patent/antitrust jurisprudence.

According to the brief, the Brulotte holding "comes from an era when the Court did not strictly adhere to the economic principles that have become critical to [its] 'more recent jurisprudence' (citations omitted). Scholars and commentators have long recognized as much, and have urged this Court to reconsider Brulotte when presented with an appropriate case. This is just such a case."

Center director Mark D. Janis submitted the brief as counsel of record on behalf of the Center and other legal and economic scholars in support of the petitioners.
Oxford, CIPR, Max Planck co-sponsor seminar  

In cooperation with Oxford University's Intellectual Property Research Centre and the Max Planck Institute for Intellectual Property and Competition Law, the Center for Intellectual Property Research hosted a Design Law Roundtable in Munich, Germany, November 22-23, 2013. The roundtable-style discussion provided an opportunity for academics to make brief introductory statements with the majority of the time allotted to open discussion.

The event featured leading international scholars in the field of design law including: Lionel Bently, University of Cambridge; Sarah Burstein, University of Oklahoma; Graeme Dinwoodie, University of Oxford; Stacey Dogan, Boston University; Jason Du Mont, Indiana University Maurer School of Law and Max Planck Institute; Philipp Fabbio, Universit� Mediterranea di Reggio Calabria; Mark Janis, Indiana University Maurer School of Law; Annette Kur, Max Planck Institute; Marshall Leaffer, Indiana University Maurer School of Law; Ansgar Ohly, Ludwig Maximilians University, Munich; Jens Schovsbo, University of Copenhagen; Alain Strowel, Saint Louis University, Brussels; Anna Tischner, Jagiellonian University, Krakow.

Topics from three sessions included protecting functional designs in design patent and design protection systems, the object of design protection, and autonomous design protection.
News from the IU Maurer School of Law Center for IP Research

February 2014

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Coming events
Tuesday, February 18:
IP Practitioner-in-Residence Richard J. (Jay) Johnson, Of Counsel, Jones Day, Dallas
(noon, lunch served)

Tuesday, February 25:
IP Practitioner-in-Residence Katherine C. Spelman, Partner, K&L Gates, Seattle
(noon, lunch served)

Friday, February 28 - Saturday, March 1:
Trademark Scholars' Roundtable (hosted by University of Texas School of Law - Austin in collaboration with IU Maurer School of Law and University of Oxford)

Tuesday, March 4:
IP Practitioner-in-Residence Edmund J. Sease and Heidi S. Nebel, McKee, Voorhees & Sease, PLC, Des Moines, Iowa
(noon, lunch served)

Thursday, March 6:
Plager Hon. S. Jay Plager, Circuit Judge, United States Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit and former Indiana Law Dean
(noon, lunch served)

Friday, March 7:
IP Practitioners-in-Residence  as part of the Legal Profession Career Choices Workshop
Erica N. Andersen, Covington & Burling LLP, Washington, D.C., and Nathan Wenk, JD'12, Knobbe Martens, Orange County, Calif.
 
Tuesday, March 25:
IP Practitioner-in-Residence  Kenneth B. Germain, Of Counsel, Wood Herron & Evans LLP
(noon, lunch served)

Thursday, May 15 - Friday, May 16:
IP and the Arts Conference (hosted in coordination with the Indiana Arts Commission and the IU Jacobs School of Music, with support from IU's New Frontiers in the Arts and Humanities program) (held in Indianapolis).

Indiana CLE credit pending for most events.
Center faculty publish three new books
Trademark and Unfair Competition Law
by Mark D. Janis and Graeme B. Dinwoodie, Oxford University (Edward Elgar Publishing, 2014)

Trademarks and Unfair Competition: Law and Policy 
by Mark D. Janis and Graeme B. Dinwoodie, Oxford University (Wolters Kluwer, 2014) (4th ed.) 

Intellectual Property Law of Plants
by Mark D. Janis, Herbert H. Jervis (former chief IP counsel, Pioneer Hi-Bred), and Richard C. Peet (Foley & Lardner, Washington, DC) (Oxford University Press, 2014)