Thirteenth Annual International Intellectual Property Lecture: Professor Jessica Litman

The Annual International Intellectual Property Lecture at Emmanuel College, Cambridge, is one of the premier events in the British Intellectual Property Law calendar. Established in 2006 from the Herchel Smith bequest to Emmanuel College and held at the college itself, this lecture series invites one eminent scholar of international intellectual property law to Cambridge each year.

Professor Jessica Litman, will deliver the thirteenth annual lecture on the topic of "Copyright and Property-Think". Professor Litman is the John F. Nickoll Professor of Law at the University of Michigan, where she teaches copyright law, trademark law, and advanced IP courses. Litman is the author of Digital Copyright and the co-author, with Jane Ginsburg and Mary Lou Kevlin, of the casebook Trademarks and Unfair Competition Law: Cases and Materials. She is an adviser for the American Law Institute's Restatement of Copyright, and has served as a trustee of the Copyright Society of the USA, and chair of the Association of American Law Schools Section on Intellectual Property. In this year’s lecture, she will argue that when we think about the copyright system, our assumptions about legal property rights shape what we see and what we don’t. We assume that broadening or narrowing the scope of copyright will redound to the benefit or detriment of creators. Three hundred years of evidence, though, belie that supposition. We need to think more concretely about copyright law's actual effect on creators, and their ability to communicate and profit from their works.

This is an invitation-only event. If you would like an invitation, please contact CIPIL Administrator, Mr. James Parish cipil@law.cam.ac.uk