TechLaw with Progressive Minds
Thursdays: 5:15-6:45pm
Location: Econ 140 (Landau Economics Bldg right across from Hoover Tower)
By: Prof. John Mitchell and Ruchika Agrawal
Courtesy of Stanford University Department of Computer Science
** Have any questions, comments, or suggestions? Email Ruchika Agrawal. **
*** Light food and refreshments will be served ***

Schedule for Spring Quarter 2007-2008

April 3, 2008:

Are you a creative person? Have you ever downloaded free music? Photocopied an article? Had an idea for an invention? Have you ever wondered how society and government balance the need to encourage creativity with a system that treats a person's creative output as "property"? Jim Pooley, an expert on intellectual property law, will inaugurate this seminar by answering the question: "Does Intellectual Property Support or Inhibit Individual Freedom and Creativity?" He will discuss how individual rights and the creative process are affected by those laws, including copyrights, patents and trade secrets. The presentation will include issues of history, technology, social science, government, law, music, literature, and international politics. A question and answer period will follow.

Mr. Pooley is President of the American Intellectual Property Law Association, and a partner at Morrison & Foerster LLP. He specializes in the litigation and trial of patent, trade secret, copyright, and technology-related commercial litigation, in state and federal courts, and before the International Trade Commission. Mr. Pooley is also author of the highly regarded treatise Trade Secrets (Law Journal Press) and teaches as an Adjunct Professor of Law at the University of California's Boalt Hall School of Law.

April 10, 2008:

Michael Genesereth and Harry Surden will introduce CodeX. CodeX explores ways in which information technology can be used to enhance the quality and efficiency of our legal system while decreasing its cost. It serves to empower all parties in our legal system.

Professor Genesereth of Stanford University's Computer Science Department is the current director of the Logic Group at Stanford and research director of CodeX (the Stanford Center for Computers and Law). He is most known for his work on Computational Logic and applications of that work in Enterprise Management and Electronic Commerce. Mr. Surden is the inaugural Resident Fellow at the Stanford Center for Computers and the Law (Codex).

April 17, 2008:

Have you ever wondered what happens at a trial involving high-stakes and intensive technology issues? Whether the jury really understands the technology at issue? Whether that actually matters? And how can experts make a difference at trial? Rusty Day will address the question: "Does Technology Really Matter at Trial?"

Mr. Day is a founding partner of Day Casebeer Madrid & Batchelder LLP, and represents emerging and mature high technology firms in connection with their prosecution, enforcement and defense of intellectual property rights throughout the world. He has successfully enforced and/or defended patent claims in the United States and Europe in connection with genetically engineered biopharmaceuticals, small molecules, medical devices and diagnostics, computer networks, data communications, video compression and software.

April 24, 2008:

Marc Peters kindly requests that you come to this talk having done the following "assignment." Go to the United States Trademark & Patent Office website and search for random patents to get a sense of what sorts of things are allowed to be patented. For example, search for "mice", "golf swing", and anything else you can dream of. Dr. Peters will address "Why the Law on Patent-Eligible Subject Matter Still Matters", covering what sorts of things are and are not allowed to be patented, along with underlying policies of the U.S. patent regime.

Dr. Peters is a partner at Morrison & Foerster LLP. His practice is primarily focused on litigation involving electronics and computer-related technologies. His cases have involved technologies such as optoelectronic transceivers, surgical lasers, semiconductor processing, synchronization software, notebook computers, modems, graphics accelerator semiconductors, video-on-demand servers, and network quality-of-service monitoring. He is the co-author of more than one hundred papers in the area of particle physics.

May 1, 2008:

Is it 1984? Chris Hoofnagle will speak on the impact technology has had on consumer protection and society's interest in privacy. He will also present an Orwellian proposal for addressing new consumer problems, involving "Total Information Awareness for Consumer Fraud."

Mr. Hoofnagle is a nationally recognized expert in information privacy law. He has testified before the U.S. Congress and the California Senate and Assembly numerous times on social security number privacy and credit transactions. A regular contributor to print, radio and television articles, Mr. Hoofnagle has provided commentary for over 1,000 news stories in the New York Times, Wall Street Journal and Washington Post, National Public Radio, ABC News and other major media outlets. Mr. Hoofnagle is senior staff attorney to the Samuelson Law, Technology & Public Policy Clinic and senior fellow with the Berkeley Center for Law & Technology.

May 8, 2008:

As the general counsel for one of the top technological innovators in the world, Bruce Sewell will share the inside out perspective on the impact of intellectual property law on technological innovation.

Mr. Sewell is senior vice president and general counsel of Intel Corporation. As general counsel, he supervises a team of roughly 600 attorneys and policy professionals located in over 30 countries around the world. Mr. Sewell also represents Intel on several professional, legislative and policy boards in the United States and abroad. Mr. Sewell has been profiled in Fortune Magazine and was recognized in 2006 as one of the 100 Most Influential Lawyers by California Lawyer magazine and the legal Daily Journal. Mr. Sewell is a frequent contributor and lecturer in the areas of global business development, innovation economies, international competition, and intellectual property rights.

May 15, 2008:

Are you unclear as to what constitutes illegal file-sharing software? So are we. Fred von Lohmann will talk about "File-Sharing Lawsuits" and their implications.

Mr. von Lohmann is a senior staff attorney with the Electronic Frontier Foundation, specializing in intellectual property matters. In that role, he has represented programmers, technology innovators, and individuals in a variety of copyright and trademark litigation, including MGM v. Grokster, decided by the Supreme Court in 2005. He is also involved in EFF's efforts to educate policy-makers regarding the proper balance between intellectual property protection and the public interest in fair use, free expression, and innovation. He has appeared on CNN, CNBC, ABC's Good Morning America, and Fox News O'Reilly Factor and has been widely quoted in a variety of national publications.

May 22, 2008:

Current U.S. copyright law is much too long, now weighing in at approximately two hundred pages. The statute is also far too complex, incomprehensible to a significant degree, and imbalanced in important ways. Moreover, it lacks normative heft--that is, the normative rationales for granting authors some protections for their works and for limiting the scope of those protections is difficult to extract from the turgid prose of its many exceptionally detailed provisions. Pamela Samuelson will share her "Preliminary Thoughts on Copyright Reform."

Pamela Samuelson is a Professor at the University of California at Berkeley with a joint appointment in the School of Information and the School of Law. She is also Co-Director of the Berkeley Center for Law and Technology. Her principal area of expertise is intellectual property law. She has written and spoken extensively about the challenges that new information technologies are posing for public policy and traditional legal regimes and is an advisor for the Samuelson Law, Technology and Public Policy Clinic. Since 2002, she has also been an honorary professor at the University of Amsterdam.

May 29, 2008:

Barbara Simons will aptly close this speaker series with the question: "Will Your Vote be Counted?" Dr. Simons will address the current state of voting machines and associated risks.

Dr. Simons is an expert on electronic voting. She was a member of the National Workshop on Internet Voting that was convened at the request of President Clinton and produced a report on Internet Voting in 2001. She participated on the Security Peer Review Group for the US Department of Defense's Internet voting project (SERVE) and co-authored the report that led to the cancellation of SERVE because of security concerns. Dr. Simons was President of ACM from July 1998 until June 2000. She founded ACM's US Public Policy Committee (USACM) in 1993 and served for many years as the Chair or co-Chair of USACM. The first woman to receive the Distinguished Engineering Alumni Award from the U.C. Berkeley College of Engineering, Dr. Simons is retired from IBM Research in Almaden. She is co-authoring a book on voting machine.