Welcome! This is the first monthly newsletter from Syracuse Intellectual Property Law Institute, a newly launched institute that is part of the Intellectual Property and Innovation Law Curricular Program. Apologies in advance for the length of this message.
As Director of SIPLI and the Curricular Program, I would like to share news about new initiatives in service, research, and teaching from SIPLI and the Program. Thanks to Dean Boise and colleagues for affirming the mission of the Program and SIPLI by approving the revisions to the Academic Handbook at the recent faculty meeting. SIPLI and the Curricular Program continue important traditions at the College of Law and demonstrate the College’s commitments locally, nationally, and internationally.
Welcome to the First Research Assistants for SIPLI and the Curricular Program
Quinn Cartelli, Cody Andrushko, and Christian Batilloro, all members of the Syracuse College of Law Class of 2019, are the inaugural research assistants. Each year SIPLI will hire a number of research assistants through the College of Law to support the various research projects.
Quinn has been working on a project relating to Fourth Estate Public Benefit Corp. v. Wall-Street.com, a case to be heard by the Supreme Court to resolve a circuit split regarding copyright registration. At issue, is whether copyright registration occurs, for the purpose of the procedural requirements to bring a copyright infringement suit, when the registration is filed or when the registration is approved. Quinn is also assisting on a project tracing the impact of the Supreme Court’s 2017 decision Star Athletica v. Varsity Brands, involving copyright protection for fashion and other designs.
Cody and Christian, continuing on work from last year, assist in launching the new Wizards and Prophets blog, more details about which will be provided in next month’s newsletter. They will also help with the updates for the forthcoming Third Edition of “Understanding Intellectual Property,” published by Carolina Press, formerly Lexis-Nexis Publishing. Their support is invaluable in updating legal developments in Trade Secrets and Patents, my two chapters in the volume.
Recent Activities (Spring/Summer 2018 to Present)
SIPLI and the newly named Curricular Program had their informal launch in April, 2018, with the Workshop on Legal and Technological Responses to Climate Change. View the videos of the half-day event at our YouTube channel. This workshop will be an annual tradition, initiated with the “Forgotten Intellectual Property Cases” Law Review Symposium in April, 2017, and continuing with a planned workshop on Data, Algorithms, and Commercialization, scheduled for April, 2019. Attendance at April’s event was good, and I encourage everyone to participate at next April’s symposium. As has been traditionally true at the College of Law, events are designed as welcoming to all participants through engaging programming, as opposed to the use of sticks. Please also look out for SIPLI supported speakers in the Spring in conjunction with the Faculty Workshop Series.
Summer was an active and busy time for SIPLI as its work involved invited conferences and engagement with the University and the university commercialization efforts in Albany. An invited presentation on intellectual property commercialization and traditional knowledge at the annual global AIPPI conference held in Tel Aviv from April 29-May 1 kicked off the Summer. The presentation was attended by leading practitioners in Israel and included a lively discussion of, among other issues, the intellectual property issues relating to the commercialization of legalized marijuana. A visit to start-ups in and around Tel Aviv was a unique pre-conference event as selected attendees learned about new business ventures in three-dimensional printing of labelled containers and the use of cardboard to build low cost bicycles and wheelchairs. More information about these ventures (including photos) are available to interested parties.
Other activities for SIPLI and the Program during the Summer included: (1) an invited presentation on patent and health care at the Annual Health Care Conference held at Georgia State University College of Law; (2) a visit to the University of Technology, Sydney, to share common efforts in developing a commercialization program; (3) an invited talk at the University of West Indies, Barbados on colonial intellectual property law in India; and (4) an invited talk on Fairness, Markets and Intellectual Property at the annual meeting of the Association of Teachers and Researchers in Intellectual Property (ATRIP) at the Hanken School of Economics, Helsinki, Finland. These events were productive opportunities to learn from colleagues throughout the world and to showcase the exciting work happening at the College of Law.
In addition, as Director of SIPLI and the Program, I offered consultation for John Gee, University Relations Manager of ESD-NYSTAR in Albany, on intellectual property licensing practices by universities in upstate New York. I also served as Guest Evaluator for the Invention Accelerator competition held at the College of Engineering in July. Inventions in the contest included portable IV devices, electronic sensing devices for robotic cars, and remote locating devices.
These are just a sample of the activities of SIPLI as the Institute and Program move forward. Updates will be provided on a monthly basis.
Forthcoming Publications
Edits were completed over the Summer for the Fourth Edition of Transactional Intellectual Property, which was released by Carolina Press in September. The first edition of this casebook was published in 2006 by Lexis-Nexis, and it has been steadily adopted by law and business schools that offer courses in intellectual property, technology, and commercialization.
Cambridge University Press will publish Exhausting Intellectual Property Rights: A Comparative Law and Policy Analysis in a few months. Part of the Summer was spent in editing the manuscript that was completed in March. The book is already available on Amazon.
I finished the manuscript of an article for the peer reviewed Science & Policy as part of its symposium issue on developments in technology and law. The manuscript, entitled “Myriad Post-Myriad,” analyzes the Utah based genetics company’s efforts to patent data mining and algorithmic medicine after the Supreme Court invalidated its key patents relating to diagnosing proclivities to breast and uterine cancer. While an ostensible defeat the company, the decision may actually have provided a boost for its new line of research and development, although other legal and policy obstacles continue.
Also completed is “Bayh-Dole beyond patents” for the Research Handbook on Intellectual Property and Technology Transfer, forthcoming from Elgar later next year. Another completed manuscript was on jurisdiction stripping and the Federal Circuit, presented at the “Erie at 80” conference hosted by the Center for Constitutional Law at University of Akron Law School in Sept. 13-14, 2018. The article entitled “Jurisdiction Stripping of the Federal Circuit?” will appear in the Akron Law Review and is part of a larger project on the jurisdiction of the Federal Circuit beyond patent law.
Next year will see the publication of Advanced Introduction to Law and Entrepreneurship and the Research Handbook on Law, Creativity, and Entrepreneurship: Forgotten Intellectual Property Lore, building on the Syracuse Law Review Symposium on Forgotten IP Lore, published last year. Both are under contract with Elgar.
Upcoming Activities
- October brings a conference invitation to Renmin University, Beijing, to deliver a keynote address on copyright licensing at the Asia Pacific Copyright Association (APCA). The trip will also include visits to Xiamen University and the Institute for Intellectual Property in Tokyo.
- November brings an invitation to speak at the National Association of College and University Attorneys (NACUA) annual meeting in Washington, D.C., on university patent litigation.
- December involves invitations to the British Library to pursue research on colonial patent law and to the World Trade Organization in Geneva to present on a panel designed on the forthcoming book from Cambridge.
- Finally, January brings the AALS conference and participation in a panel for the AALS Intellectual Property Section on resale, restraints on alienability, and intellectual property law.
These are just some of the activities to showcase SIPLI and the Program in the next few months. This week I am an invited participant at the Right to Know workshop at the University of Toronto and at the International Business Council Annual meeting. More news to follow with detailed discussion about legal developments in next month’s newsletter.
I am excited about the engagement that the work for SIPLI and the Program provides and to represent the College of Law in this capacity. The engagement infuses my teaching at the College of Law and my interactions across campus. Much thanks to support from the College of Law and to colleagues who have provided support and encouragement.