Symposium

The symposium considered the role of intellectual property in liberal democracy. Participants explored the issues of intellectual property in our society and how it will resolve conflicts over equal concern in access to basic human needs and capabilities, free speech, creative expression, and access to knowledge. These debates encompassed not only current events and cases, but also echoed historical debates about the ways that intellectual property law has been conceptualized in terms of equitable rewards versus desirable welfarist outcomes, incentives versus access, individual inventorship and authorship versus social effects, and bleed into many moral debates about what we ought to do and what we owe to each other in a liberal society. The symposium discussed the ways that intellectual property accommodates, fulfills, or belies liberal values, how it should be designed with such values in mind, and, ultimately, whether and how intellectual property is vital to a liberal democratic order, and what may be alternatives to it.

Symposium participants included Bob Bone (University of Texas School of Law), Oren Bracha (University of Texas School of Law), Mala Chatterjee (Columbia Law School), Aman Gebru (University of Houston Law Center), John M. Golden (University of Texas School of Law), Patrick Goold (The City Law School, University of London), Glynn Lunney (Texas A&M School of Law), Mark McKenna (UCLA School of Law), Neil W. Netanel (UCLA School of Law), Shani Shisha (SMU Dedman School of Law), Jessica Silbey (Boston University School of Law), David Simon (Northeastern University School of Law), Kara Swanson (Northeastern University School of Law), Talha Syed (UC Berkeley School of Law), Anjali Vats (University of Pittsburgh School of Law), and Melissa Wasserman (University of Texas School of Law).

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