Bend or Break: Tailoring the Patent System to Promote Innovation

January 22, 2010, 8:30 a.m. to 5 p.m.

Presented by UCI School of Law in coordination with the Federal Bar Association/Orange County Chapter
University of California, Irvine • Beckman Center of the National Academies of Sciences and Engineering • 100 Academy, Irvine, CA 92617 • 8 hours MCLE credit

This one-day conference will consider technology and innovation policy related to the U.S. patent system. The patent system has been the subject of several recent critical appraisals, including the National Academy report A Patent System for the 21st Century (2004).

The conference will consider current legislative proposals for patent reform, the role of the Patent Office, the role of the court system, and substantive changes in patent law that address such critiques. Consideration of these topics will be structured around commentary and discussion of The Patent Crisis and How the Courts Can Solve It (D. Burk & M. Lemley, University of Chicago Press, 2009).

Presentations by nationally and internationally recognized scholars from law, business, and economics will consider historical, doctrinal, comparative, and empirical perspectives. Collected papers from the conference will be published in the UC Irvine Law Review.

Eight hours of MCLE credit are available through UC Irvine Extension, an approved State Bar of California CLE provider.

Registration fee: $200 general; $75 students and faculty. (Student attendance limited to 25.)

To register: Register online or at the door.

Keynote Speaker

“Patent Law Triumphs and Tragedies: A Professorial Commentary on Areas of Improvement for the Patent Act”

Honorable Randall RaderUnited States Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit
Randall R. Rader was appointed to the United States Claims Court by President George H.W. Bush in 1989 and served on that court until his appointment to the Federal Circuit in 1990. Judge Rader taught Patent Law at the University of Virginia School of Law and at the George Washington University National Law Center, and Comparative Patent Law at Georgetown University Law Center. He is the author of a casebook, Patent Law, published by West Publishing in 1998.

Conference Hosts: UCI Law's IP Faculty

Dan Burk
UC Irvine School of Law
Chancellor's Professor of Law Dan Burk is an internationally prominent authority on patent law and other areas of intellectual property. He is the author with Professor Mark Lemley of The Patent Crisis and How the Courts Can Solve It, which contends the courts should establish a patent policy that is calibrated to the needs of specific industries.

Catherine Fisk
UC Irvine School of Law
Chancellor's Professor of Law Catherine Fisk is a nationally recognized expert in labor relations. In her new book, Working Knowledge: Employee Innovation and the Rise of Corporate Intellectual Property, 1800-1930, Fisk chronicles the legal and social transformations that led to businesses retaining legal ownership of employee-generated intellectual property, and argues this was won at the expense of economic democracy.

Christopher Leslie
UC Irvine School of Law
An expert in antitrust law, intellectual property and class action settlements, Professor Leslie is the author of the forthcoming casebook Antitrust Law and Intellectual Property Rights (Oxford University Press). He is a co-author on the leading treatise in that field, IP and Antitrust: An Analysis of Antitrust Principles Applied to Intellectual Property Law (2nd Edition 2009, with Hovenkamp, Janis, and Lemley).

R. Anthony Reese
UC Irvine School of Law
Professor Reese is widely regarded as one of the nation’s premier scholars in the field of copyright and has written extensively on the subject, with particular focus on the complexity and nuance of copyright doctrine.