Eleven years ago, DePaul University College of Law, Chicago allowed a small group of IP scholars to get together and discuss their works in progress. This became an annual IP Scholars Conference (IPSC) with the number of participants increasing exponentially, and co-sponsored by the IP centers at Berkeley Law School, Cardozo School of Law and the Stanford Law School. The latest edition was held on August 11-12 in Chicago. The conference had 137 presenters including many of the top IP scholars in the world today. For anyone looking to delve into some of the latest IP scholarship, the schedule page of the conference provides a wonderful source, with all the abstracts as well as some papers and presentations divided categorically and linked. While NUJS, Kolkata has recently started a working paper series meant for similar purposes, ie, allowing academics to present their working papers and receive feedback and comments prior to it being published, I can’t say I know of any other such initiative in India for any type of law, let alone with a focus on IP. If any of our readers do know of such a thing, please do share it with us. This form of presentation and feedback is a great way to encourage academia as well as increase its standards – not only for the presenter but also for those who are critiquing it.
On a smaller scale, I know of at least a few top law schools in US that offer seminar courses to their students based on the same logic. In these seminars, each session has an academic presenting their draft papers (prior to publication) and students are graded on their ability to critique these papers. It provides a wonderful opportunity for students as well as academics, to actively engage in the latest developments in the law and policy field – getting a chance to interact with top academics as well as giving them a chance to provide often valuable feedback. Would such a model not be feasible in our own Indian legal education?
Getting back to the papers presented in the IPSC 11, I’ve only had a chance to look over some of the abstracts, and have not actually read any of the papers yet – however, there are several interesting looking ones, most notably (to me), Robert Merges’ new book, ‘Justifying IP‘. A quick glance over some of the abstracts, especially under the Patent and IP theory related sections, seems to show many attempts at fixing what’s commonly called a broken patent system. I’m making no claims of disputing some of these top IP scholars before even reading their work, but I can’t seem to help thinking that rather than it being a broken system which needs to be fixed, it is more of trying to goad an inherently dysfunctional system into working the best it can. Having said that, I shall soon get into these papers and see if my view is justified or not.
A blog dedicated to covering the conference is here.
Good plan go ahead. Wish you all the best