Conferences and Meetings

Major Conferences

Framed!! How Law Constructs and Constrains Culture

This conference, held in association with Full Frame, the premier documentary film festival in the United States, examined the impact of intellectual property law on documentary filmmaking and music. It brought together artists - documentary filmmakers and directors, classical composers and audio collage artists - with a distinguished roster of legal experts to explore the complex interplay between law and art.  The participants explored issues such as hurdles faced by filmmakers in clearing rights and renewing limited licenses for images and music, and how the line between permissible borrowing and theft in music has shifted in recent years (such that the evolution of genres like jazz, which relied on practices of borrowing and referencing, might not be possible under today's regime).  The panelists also discussed legal reforms that might better promote creativity and take into account artists' perspectives.

International Public Goods and Transfer of Technology under a Globalized Intellectual Property Regime (webcast) (more)

This conference focused the attention of an exceptional roster of distinguished economists, political scientists, legal scholars and other experts on the globalization of intellectual property rights. Stronger and more harmonized intellectual property rights seek to foster greater innovation and reduce costs of transferring proprietary information across borders. However, many have raised concerns that they will actually retard economic and technological development by hindering future innovation and impeding international access to essential goods and services covered by intellectual property. Patents may raise the costs of medicines, copyrights may affect the access of libraries and students to new information, and private ownership of new seed varieties may reduce biodiversity, even as these policies raise incentives for innovation. A "one size fits all" model of intellectual property rights may particularly harm developing countries, as well as small and medium-sized firms and researchers everywhere. This conference analyzed the complex conceptual foundations of the new globalized intellectual property regime, and examined ways to minimize social costs and enhance the benefits that could ensue from the Agreement on Trade-Related Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights (TRIPS) and other international agreements. The papers from this conference are being published in a major volume by Cambridge University Press, forthcoming in 2005.

Co-Sponsored Events

Collective Action and Proprietary Rights

With Duke's Program on Global Health and Technology Access and Duke's Center for the Study of Public Genomics, the Center co-sponsored a meeting on promoting innovation and access in health through collective action such as humanitarian licensing, patent pools, and open source projects directed to developing drugs that fight neglected diseases.

WIPO and the Future of Intellectual Property

The Center co-sponsored a Trans Atlantic Consumer Dialogue meeting that brought together leading experts and stakeholders from academia, industry, NGOs, and governments, as well as members of the WIPO secretariat, to discuss the future of WIPO. The discussion focused on reconciling WIPO's aims of promoting private intellectual property rights with its goal, in the words of the agreement between WIPO and the UN, of  "promoting creative intellectual activity and . . . facilitating the transfer of technology related to industrial property to the developing countries in order to accelerate economic, social and cultural development." The meeting contributed to a proposal by the governments of Brazil and Argentina for a WIPO Development Agenda, which was accepted by the WIPO General Assembly.

Hot Topics in Intellectual Property Symposia

The Center has co-sponsored five successive symposia on "hot topics" in intellectual property law. Panels at these events have addressed patents versus open source approaches to software, patent reform and major patent law decisions, debates surrounding peer-to-peer file sharing systems, and the appropriate limits of copyright protection -- from the diverse perspectives of judges, practitioners, legislators, industry, and academics. Keynote speakers have included Judges Randall Rader, Arthur Gajarsa, and Timothy Dyk of the United States Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit, and George Gilder of the Gilder Technology Report and Discovery Institute.

Past Events

Duke Conference on the Public Domain (webcast) (papers)

In November 2001, Duke Law School hosted the first major conference to focus squarely on the topic of the public domain. This “extraordinary meeting” (Seth Shulman, Technology Review) drew together “an elite group of intellectuals and scientists” (Patti Waldmeir,Financial Times) from a range of disciplines including law, computer science, music, and cultural theory. Against the backdrop of recent expansions in intellectual property rights, the event ultimately confirmed that the “other side” of intellectual property – the public domain – plays a vital role in areas ranging from the human genome to appropriationist art, and from the production of scientific data to the architecture of our communications networks.

Music and Theft: Technology, Sampling, and the Law

This conference brought together practitioners and theorists to discuss music sampling’s technological foundations, artistic and cultural implications, and legal ramifications. Participants included sampling wunderkind DJ Spooky, seminal cultural theorist Dick Hebdige, music theorists and composer-professors Anthony Kelley and Scott Lindroth, music historian and BMI archivist David Sanjek, several prominent music attorneys and legal academics, as well as Public Domain Fellow and conference organizer Daphne Keller.