Contact: Janet Harvey-Clark, MSU College of Law, (517) 432-6959; or Russ White, University Relations, (517) 432-0923, whiterus@msu.edu

4/6/2005

EAST LANSING, Mich. – The Intellectual Property & Communications Law Program at Michigan State University College of Law is hosting its annual conference April 8-9 at the Law College Building on the MSU campus. Lawrence Lessig, one of the world’s foremost experts in Internet law and policy, will deliver the keynote address for the event at 6 p.m. Friday.

Titled “W(h)ither the Middleman: The Role and Future of Intermediaries in the Information Age,” this two-day conference will bring together more than 50 internationally prominent and nationally recognized scholars to consider pressing issues on intellectual property, technology, and innovation laws and policies. The conference is co-sponsored by the Michigan State Law Review, the Quello Center for Telecommunication Management & Law in the College of Communication Arts & Sciences, and the Norwich Law School at the University of East Anglia in the United Kingdom.

“Today, anybody can become an author, publisher, distributor, promoter, or even critic,” said Peter Yu, founding director of the Intellectual Property & Communications Law Program and the event’s organizer. “So there is a widely held belief that middlemen are redundant in the information age, and we should get rid of them. However, time remains scarce, and many services – such as telecommunications services – are very costly to provide. Some of the existing intermediaries may disappear, some of them may stay and other new intermediaries may emerge. How law, technology and the market interact with these third parties is the central focus of this conference.”

Earlier this week, the U.S. Supreme Court heard oral arguments on two key Internet cases. This timely conference will address some of the cutting-edge issues in the cases, as well as other broader issues on Internet development.

The first day of the conference consists of panels focusing on different groups of intermediaries: collective societies and online service providers; universities and research and development communities; and libraries and archives. The second day considers such issues as the economics, regulation and architectural aspects of intermediaries. The conference concludes with a panel looking at the future of technology and innovation policy.

Lawrence Lessig, the C. Wendell and Edith M. Carlsmith Professor of Law at Stanford University, will deliver the keynote address. “We are very fortunate to have Professor Lessig on our campus,” Yu said.“Larry is one of the most important and original thinkers in the field of cyberlaw. He has the unique ability to communicate deep and complex law and policy issues in an insightful, yet accessible way. Those of us who research in the area also have great admiration for his dedication to make the Internet a better place.”

Lessig is the founder of the Center for Internet and Society at Stanford Law School and chairs the Creative Commons project. He is also a board member of the Electronic Frontier Foundation and the Center for the Public Domain. More recently, he represented Web site operator Eric Eldred in the groundbreaking case of Eldred v. Ashcroft, a constitutional challenge to the 1998 Sonny Bono Copyright Term Extension Act. His recent books include “Free Culture, The Future of Ideas” and “Code and Other Laws of Cyberspace.”

The Intellectual Property & Communications Law Program at MSU College of Law focuses on the intersection of intellectual property and communications law. Founded in fall 2003, this nationally ranked program boasts a full-time faculty of scholars in intellectual property and communications law and leading scholars in international trade and sports law. It offers more than 25 courses in the field, a new master’s program in intellectual property and communications law for both lawyers and non-lawyers, and joint academic programs with other MSU colleges, the University of Ottawa Faculty of Law and Grand Valley State University.

MSU College of Law was founded as the Detroit College of Law in 1891. The college affiliated with MSU in 1995 and moved to MSU’s East Lansing campus in 1997. The move enabled the law college to build state-of-the-art facilities and to provide the benefits of a Big Ten campus.

MSU College of Law strengthened its affiliation with MSU last year, becoming more closely aligned academically. The association between the two schools has led to a comprehensive interdisciplinary legal education program at the law college. Today, the college remains one of the nation’s oldest continually operating independent law schools and one of only two private law schools to be affiliated with a research university.

For information about the conference, contact the MSU Law Events Office at (517) 432-6955, or visit www.law.msu.edu/ipclp/conference05/index.html