This is a huge Month for IP in Seattle. There are 4 major Events happening between the 7th and the 28th:

13th Annual Intellectual Property Institute
Seattle University CLE on Software and Piracy
Washington State Patent Law Association CLE
Music in the New Millennium

I will be live blogging from both the 13th Annual IP Institute and the Music for the New Millennium event. I will be in New Orleans for the 2009 Nonprofit Technology Conference for the other two. If anyone is interested in attending and representing the FFIP / Free Culture point of view and would like to blog about it please contact me (Brian at freedomforip.org). I will also be adding these events to the FFIP Google calendar (Along with the NOLA conference).

13th Annual Intellectual Property Institute

Date: March 7th
Event: IP Conference
Location: WA Convention Center
Cost: $225 GA, $100 for first 20 students

Speakers:
20 plus Highlights include:
Joseph Miller, Lewis and of Clark Law, speaking on recent supreme court cases
Bruce E.H. Johnson, Davis Wright Tremaine, speaking on Fair Use and the First Amendment
There is even a whole panel on Second Life and Online Liability!

The Intersection of Intellectual Property, Patent Law, and Software Piracy

Date: March 14th
Event: Software CLE
Location: Seattle University Law School

Speakers:
Judge James P. Donohue, Magistrate Judge, Western District of Washington
Katheryn Frierson, Assistant U.S. Attorney, Criminal Division, U.S. Attorney’s Office, Western District of Washington
William J. Harmon, Senior Attorney, Microsoft Corporation, Redmond, WA
Michael D. Stein, Partner-in-charge, Woodcock Washburn, Seattle, WA

Register Online for the SU Software Piracy CLE

Washington State Patent Law Association CLE

Date: March 19th
Event: Lunch CLE on Patents
Location: Washington Athletic Club, First Floor

Schedule
Registration 11:30 a.m.
WSPLA Business 11:55 a.m. – Noon (Please note early start)
Program and Lunch: Noon – 1:30 p.m. (Please note due to volume of material to cover, the Program will begin at noon sharp)

Cost: WSPLA Members $55 Students $35 Others: $75
Panelists:
-Dale R. Cook, Intellectual Ventures
-Scott R. Hayden, Amazon.com
-Jennifer K. Johnson, Zymogenetics
-Brian C. Park, Dorsey & Whitney

Cases Discussed:
SanDisk Corp. v. STMicroelectronics, Inc. (Federal Circuit repudiates “reasonable apprehension of suit” standard for patent declaratory judgment actions and might allow DJ actions in response to any invitation to license)
In re Comisky (Method claims that depend entirely on use of mental processes do not contain patentable subject matter)
In re Nuijten (Federal Circuit says electrical signal not a “manufacture” and therefore not patentable subject matter)
In re Seagate (Federal Circuit replaces duty of due care standard for avoiding enhanced damages with “objective recklessness” standard)
KSR Intl v. Teleflex (Supreme Court rejects rigid application of Federal Circuit’s “teaching, suggestion or motivation” test for obviousness)

Music in the New Millennium

Date: March 28th
Event: Future of Music panel talk
Location: Davis Wright Tremaine LLP, 1201 Third Ave, 22nd Floor Seattle Wa
Cost: Suggested contribution of $15 (law students are free).

Speakers:
Dave Dederer Lead singer of Presidents of the United States of America and VP of Content for Melodeo
Robert Sullivan, Music attorney for Johnny Cash, Randy Travis
Dan Sheeran, SVP RealNetworks
Online Registration

This week Seattle University and Seattle University Law hosted a conference on Globalization & Justice from a critical Interdisciplinary perspective. The Friday keynote speech was not a speech, but instead a thought experiment focused on changing the way we think about scholarship. Francisco Valdes did a great job of engaging the group in thinking about how to democratize social justice as a grass roots community movement.

Here are my notes from his talk:

Background Assumptions:
1. Community is essential for new knowledge (without Community scholarship is hollow and removed from the real)
2. Can we approach Social Justice scholarship without being critical?
3. The processes is ultimately Political
4. Justice needs to be viewed through identities
5. Communities define Identities
6. Diversity produces conflict and possibly trust as communities and identities interact

Thought Experiment:
How can we build a framework to allow the interaction essential to building understanding between communities?

Question:
How do we engage the people in a movement when they are tethered to the old system for livelihood?
Answer:
It is a process of hard work similar to gardening. It takes hands on work in the community that enables people to move away from the system they are tied to. It will not happen overnight, but it can happen.

Francisco Valdes, Professor of Law, earned a B.A. in 1978 from the University of California at Berkeley, a J.D. with honors in 1984 from the University of Florida College of Law, and a J.S.M. in 1991 and a J.S.D. in 1994 from Stanford Law School. Between law school and his graduate law work, he practiced with Miami and San Francisco law firms, and taught as an adjunct professor at Golden Gate Law School. After receiving his J.S.D. from Stanford, he taught at California Western School of Law in San Diego, joining the UM faculty in 1996. He is a leading figure in the LatCrit movement and in gay rights scholarship and is co-chair of LatCrit, Inc. He teaches civil procedure, comparative law, critical race theory, law and sexuality, law and film, and U.S. constitutional law.

Thanks to Margaret Chon for organizing the conference.

The SU Law Students for Free Culture (SFFC) chapter has been actively pursuing official status for almost a year. We started recruiting last spring at the incoming 1L student organization fair and continued the process throughout this fall. We currently have 15 members and 4 active board members. This last week we received official status as a student organization. This makes Seattle University Law one of a small group of law schools that officially support the free culture movement. Most other SFFC chapters are in undergrad institutions.

This official status is important for three reasons:

First it demonstrates the schools involvement on social justice issues that are unique to the Information Age.

Second the official status allows us a greater opportunity to voice our concerns on issues of relevance to legal scholarship and open access.

Third the official status will allow us to use the law school to host forums or educational events around issues like fair use, privacy and ethics, maybe even a Continuing Legal Education Seminar.

I would like to give strong thanks to other founding board members who spent serious time and effort drafting our charter, our mission statement, and navigating the politics of the Student Bar Association (SBA).
Anne Marie Marra 2L
Jessica Creager 2L
Shane Robinson 3L

Our Official Mission Statement:

Seattle University Law Students for Free Culture aim to place the tools of creation, distribution, communication and collaboration, teaching and learning into the hands of everyone through the democratizing power of digital technology and the Internet.

In promoting a culture of participation, accompanied with such technology, a new paradigm of creation is possible, where anyone can succeed on their merit.

Our goals are to:

• seek a balance of intellectual property rights, where other rights of the individual and social policy are not encroached by trends to over-expand intellectual property rights.

• bring attention to how the digital industry ironically clings to obsolete modes of distribution through bad legislation, and call out repressive legislation that stifles innovation.

• oppose monitoring technology that prevents users from exercising dominion and control over their privately owned hardware, and their own intellectual property.

• seize opportunities presented by the Internet and digital technology before such opportunities become irretrievable.

The future is in our hands; we choose to promote a technological and cultural movement to defend the digital commons.