Contact: Peter Yu, MSU-DCL College of Law, (517) 432-6908; or Russ White, University Relations, (517) 432-0923, whiterus@msu.edu

3/25/2004

EAST LANSING, Mich. – More than 60 internationally prominent scholars will gather during a two-day conference at Michigan State University-DCL College of Law to consider pressing problems with intellectual property and cyber law issues.

Titled “Intellectual Property, Sustainable Development and Endangered Species: Understanding the Dynamics of the Information Ecosystem,” the conference will be held on Friday and Saturday, March 26 and 27, at the Law College Building on the MSU campus. Other topics to be covered include copyright, broadband, fair use, traditional knowledge, and innovation and competition barriers.

The conference will bring together intellectual property scholars, communications policy experts, property theorists, economists, political scientists, environmental activists and policymakers from universities and government agencies throughout the world.

Issues to be addressed include the balance between intellectual property protection and the public domain, broadband platforms and media access, the tension between real and intellectual property theories, biological and cultural diversity, technology transfer among developed and less developed countries, and open-source software.

"Global, interdisciplinary research is one of the main focuses of our new program," said professor Peter Yu, founding director of the MSU-DCL Intellectual Property and Communications Law Program and the event's organizer. "What we want to achieve in this conference is to bring together scholars from different backgrounds and disciplines to examine our complex information ecosystems and rethink the future of intellectual property and communications laws."

Adam Mossoff, who teaches patent law at the college, called the event “one of the largest intellectual property conferences in recent memory.”

“I’m particularly excited about the conference, not only because the panels are addressing vital issues within intellectual property, but also because they comprise a substantial portion of the top scholars working in this increasingly important area,” Mossoff said.

Future programs will feature Professor Donald Chisum, author of the leading treatise in patent law, as well as a symposium on Chinese Internet research at the University of California at Berkeley.

The program now boasts more than 20 intellectual property and communications law courses in addition to a faculty of four scholars who have wide expertise in the field, including Kevin Saunders, an expert in media law and the First Amendment, and Adam Candeub, who will join the faculty in the fall from the Federal Communications Commission.

Founded in 1891, MSU-DCL College of Law is a private law college affiliated with, and located on the campus of, Michigan State University. MSU-DCL remains the oldest continuously operating independent law school in the nation. The college has been accredited by the American Bar Association since 1941, and has been a member of the Association of American Law Schools since 1946.

For more information on the conference, visit www.law.msu.edu/ipclp/conference04/index.html