This year’s conference theme is IP and Migration – of people, information, technology, creativity and law; as always, we are happy to consider other submissions within ISTHIP’s core themes. We aim at scholars from all disciplines – law, cultural studies, sociology, media studies, economics, history, philosophy and anyone who studies IP.
As in previous ISHTIP conferences, each participant bears their own travel, accommodation and related costs (we will suggest hotels in due course); there is no registration fee.
“Patent Futures: A History,” is the fourth and finalworkshop of the ERC-funded project “Patents asScientific Information, 1895-2020,”(www.passim.se) in collaboration with TheInternational Society for the History and Theory ofIntellectual Property (ISHTIP www.ishtip.org).
Call For Papers: Patent Futures. A History
Dates: April 26-28, 2023.
Venue: Mundaneum, Mons, Belgium.
Call closes: November 15, 2022.
Proposal format: 500 Word proposal/200 Word bio.
Submit to: 2023workshop@passim.se
Co-founded by the two Belgian lawyers Paul Otlet (1868-1944) and Henri LaFontaine (1854-1943), Mundaneum http://www.mundaneum.org, has played a crucial role for PASSIM, both in terms of its structure and design, but also because it was here the project was first conceived. As PASSIM draws to a close, we return to “the scene of the crime” for a workshop on the past, present, and future of patents. Patents tend to be associated with progress, modernity, and future usefulness. At the same time, we know that they are profoundly contextual, situated in specific historical eras and traditions. Time and various temporalities therefore occupy crucial points of departure when researching the history of patents. We now invite Ph.D. candidates or recent Ph.D.’s (degree awarded no earlier than during 2022) to submit proposals on topics that include but are not limited to: questions of memory and regimes of remembrance in the patent system; legal temporality in general, especially in relation to the construction of value and capital; efficiency and speed as elements of bureaucratic time inside the Patent Office. In line with Otlet and LaFontaine’s Mundaneum legacy and their visionary work on knowledge circulation, we also invite contributions that focus on the visualization of patents and knowledge in general. Finally, we encourage submissions that consider the various formats and temporalities of patent records and/or engage critically with the archives and sources of interdisciplinary patent scholarship. PASSIM will cover the travel and accommodation cost of the selected participants. Come and meet the entire PASSIM team and our special invitees: David Pretel, Assistant Professor of History and Economic Institutions, Autonomous University of Madrid; Katarina Nordqvist, Associate Professor and Head of Section, Swedish Ministry of Education and Research. Follow us on @passimproject as we announce more invited commentators!
Any questions can be directed to the organizers of the workshop: Jesper Alkarp jesper.alkarp@liu.se Isabelle Strömstedt isabelle.stromstedt@liu.se Johan Larson Lindal johan.larson.lindal@liu.se
VÉRONIQUE POUILLARD (OSLO) IN CONVERSATION WITH STINA TEILMAN-LOCK (CBS) AND JOHANNA GIBSON (QMUL)
23 May 2022 BST 11am; CET 12pm; EST 6am: PST 3am; AEST 8pm
‘Paris to New York: The Transatlantic Fashion Industry in the Twentieth Century’
Véronique Pouillard (Oslo) in conversation with Stina Teilman-Lock (CBS) and Johanna Gibson (QMUL).
Chaired by ISHTIP Co-Director, Kathy Bowrey (UNSW).
Fashion is one of the most dynamic industries in the world, with an annual retail value of $3 trillion and globally recognized icons like Coco Chanel, Christian Dior, and Yves Saint Laurent. How did this industry generate such economic and symbolic capital?
Focusing on the roles of entrepreneurs, designers, and institutions in fashion’s two most important twentieth-century centers, Paris to New York tells the history of the industry as a negotiation between art and commerce. In the late nineteenth century, Paris-based firms set the tone for a global fashion culture nurtured by artistic visionaries. In the burgeoning New York industry, however, the focus was on mass production. American buyers, trend scouts, and designers crossed the Atlantic to attend couture openings, where they were inspired by, and often accused of counterfeiting, designs made in Paris. For their part, Paris couturiers traveled to New York to understand what American consumers wanted and to make deals with local manufacturers for whom they designed exclusive garments and accessories. The cooperation and competition between the two continents transformed the fashion industry in the early and mid-twentieth century, producing a hybrid of art and commodity.
Véronique Pouillard shows how the Paris–New York connection gave way in the 1960s to a network of widely distributed design and manufacturing centers. Since then, fashion has diversified. Tastes are no longer set by elites alone, but come from the street and from countercultures, and the business of fashion has transformed into a global enterprise.
27 April 2022 BST 1pm; CET 2pm; EST 8 am; PST 5am; AEST 10pm
Performing Copyright. Law, Theatre and Authorship.
Luke M. McDonagh (LSE) in conversation with Jane Wessel (USDA) and Kathy Bowrey (UNSW).
Chaired by ISHTIP Co-Director, Eva Hemmungs Wirtén, (Linköping University) .
Based on empirical research, this innovative book explores issues of performativity and authorship in the theatre world under copyright law and addresses several inter-connected questions: who is the author and first owner of a dramatic work? Who gets the credit and the licensing rights? What rights do the performers of the work have? Given the nature of theatre as a medium reliant on the re-use of prior existing works, tropes, themes and plots, what happens if an allegation of copyright infringement is made against a playwright? Furthermore, who possesses moral rights over the work?
To evaluate these questions in the context of theatre, the first part of the book examines the history of the dramatic work both as text and as performative work. The second part explores the notions of authorship and joint authorship under copyright law as they apply to the actual process of creating plays, referring to legal and theatrical literature, as well as empirical research. The third part looks at the notion of copyright infringement in the context of theatre, noting that cases of alleged theatrical infringement reach the courts comparatively rarely in comparison with music cases, and assessing the reasons for this with respect to empirical research. The fourth part examines the way moral rights of attribution and integrity work in the context of theatre. The book concludes with a prescriptive comment on how law should respond to the challenges provided by the theatrical context, and how theatre should respond to law.
Luke McDonagh is Assistant Professor at the Law Department at the London School of Economics (LSE) where he undertakes research in the areas of Intellectual Property Law and Constitutional Law. His new book Performing Copyright. Law. Theatre and Copyright is published by Bloomsbury Press, 2021.
Kathy Bowrey is a Professor in the School of Law, Society and Criminology, Faculty of Law and Justice, University of New South Wales, Australia and ISHTIP Co-Director.
We invite contributions to the 3rd workshop of the ERC-funded project PASSIM (Patents as Scientific Information, 1895–2020), in collaboration with The International Society for the History and Theory of Intellectual Property (ISHTIP).
Deadline is soon: October 30, 2021
Dates: May 16–18, 2022 Venue: Norrköping, Sweden Call closes: October 30, 2021 Proposal format: 500 Word proposal/200 Word bio Submit to:2022workshop@passim.se
Although legal historians and humanities scholars have studied patent law and its histories beyond their economic effects, it is surprising that they have devoted less attention to their military entanglements. The workshop welcomes papers on patents, relating to the theme of ‘war and peace’. In this sense, patents are understood as both legal documents and property rights, and conceptualised in a variety of disciplinary ways, ranging from legal tools to secure economic monopolies, to ‘weapons’ protecting national interests. In so doing, the workshop aims to explore patents as devices that create and redistribute power, and as active protagonists fuelling and constituting so-called “patent wars”.
Machines of Law and Intellectual Property as Legal Machinery.
DAY 1
20 June 2022
BST 12.00-12.15; CET 13:00-13:15; EST 7.00-7.15; PST 7.00-7.15; AEST 21.00-21.15 Welcome, Organisers.
BST 12.15-13.00; CET 13:15-14:00; EST 7.15-8.00; AEST 21.15-22.00 Devaluing Trademarks in an AI Driven Marketplace, Christine Haight Farley. Commentator: Marc Stuhldreier. Chair: Matilda Arvidsson.
Break
BST 13.15-14.00; CET 14:15-15:00; EST 8.15-9.00; PST 5.15-6.00; AEST 22.15-23.00 Human Labour and AI Creativity: Beyond the Author/Tool Dichotomy, Kristofer Erickson. Commentator: Ulf Petrusson. Chair: Véronique Pouillard.
Break
BST 14.15- 15.45; CET 15:15-16:45; EST 9.15-10.45; PST 6.00-7.45; AEST 23.00-00.45 Technologies of Peace: Enemy Patents, Custodial Functions, and the Interwar Construction of Security, Anna Saunders.
UNESCO on the Stage: UNESCO and Algerian Performers Approaching the Rome Convention, Minja Mitrovic.
Chair: Shane Burke.
16:45-17:45 Mingle event.
Day 2
21 JUNE 2022
BST 8.15-9.00; CET 9:15-10:00; EST 3.15-4.00 PST 0.15-1.00; AEST 17.15-18.00 Artefactual history of copyright’s subject matter, Ewa Laskowska-Litak. Commentator: Kathy Bowrey. Chair: Martin Fredriksson.
Break
BST 9.15-10.00; CET 10:15-11:00; EST 4.15-5.00; PST 1.15-2.00; AEST 18.15-19.00
Hovering between institutions: Negotiating bureaucracies and the harmonization of intellectual property in a European context, Marius Buning. Commentator: Fiona Macmillan. Chair: Merima Bruncevic.
Break
BST 10.15-11.00; CET 11:15-12:00; EST 5.15-6.00; PST 2.15-3.00; AEST 19.15-20.00 Replicability Crisis and Intellectual Property Law, Ofer Tur-Sinai & Or Cohen Sasson. Commentator: Gabriel Galvez-Behar. Chair: Frantzeska Papadopoulou.
Lunch
BST 12.30-13.15; CET 13:30-14:15; EST 7.30-8.15; PST 4.30-5.15; AEST 21.30-22.15 Inking IP: Tattoo Machines & Law-Making, Melanie Stockton-Brown. Commentator: Jeanne Fromer. Chair: José Bellido.
BST 13.15-14.00; CET 14:15-15:00; EST 8.15-9.00; PST 5.15-6.00; AEST 22.15-23.00 Machines, surveillance and forced labour, Johanna Dahlin. Commentator: Stina Teilmann Lock. Chair: Kara Swanson.
Break
BST 14.15-15.45; CET 15:15-16:45; EST 9.15-10.45; PST 6.15-7.45; AEST 23.15-00.45 Emergent Spaces of the Mechanical Author: Ernst Krenek and Interwar Mechanical-Musical Rights, Johan Larson Lindal.
Looming Questions: Could an Indian Weaver Patent a Loom in the Early-Twentieth, Subhadeep Chowdhury.
Chair: Marta Iljadica.
BST 16.00-17.00; CET 17:00-18:00; EST 11.00-12.00; PST 8.00-9.00; AEST 1.00-2.00 Governing board only, Board meeting.
19:00 Dinner.
Day 3
22 June 2022
BST 9.00-9.45; CET 10:00-10:45; EST 4.00-4.45; PST 1.00-1.45; AEST 18.00-18.45 The Machinery of Creation. Oulipo Poetry, Copyright & Rules of Constraint, Kathy Bowrey and Janet Chan. Commentator: Eva Hemmungs Wirtén. Chair: Marius Buning.
Break
BST 10.00-11.30; CET 11:00-12:30; EST 5.00-6.30; PST 2.00-3.30; AEST 19.00-20.30 The voice and the machine: Performing music and theatre on the early radio (1921-1928), Anna Marie Skråmestø Nesheim.
Towards Innovations in Intellectual Property Studies: Using Topic Modeling to Explore the Limits of Copyright Law, Jamaica Jones.
Chair: Hyo Yoon Kang.
BST 11.40-12.15; CET 12:40-13:15; EST 6.40-7.15; PST 3.40-4.15; AEST 20.40-21.15 Closing remarks, Organisers/Ulf Petrusson.
The workshop is hosted by Merima Bruncevic and the Center for Intellectual Property at the Department of Law, University of Gothenburg, Sweden.
Machines of Law and Intellectual Property as Legal Machinery
20-22 June 2022
The 13th Annual Workshop of the International Society for the History and Theory of Intellectual Property (ISHTIP) will be hosted by Center for Intellectual Property at the Department of Law, University of Gothenburg, Sweden.
The workshop will have a hybrid form, meaning we will cater for both physical and online participation.
We are going to be exploring themes connected to machines in and of law, specifically how law in general, and intellectual property law in particular, can be, and are, affected by machines and by machinic agencies. Machines and machinery resonate across the IP spectrum and across disciplines, from early modern innovations to the contemporary challenges of artificial intelligence. We are especially interested in papers that explore historical and contemporary connotations that encourage disciplinary self-reflexivity and conversations. Interdisciplinary approaches are strongly encouraged, particularly with respect to:
legal subjecthood e.g. technologically augmented human beings as well as non-human, less-than-human and more-than-human agencies;
materialities e.g. legal classification, administration, properties;
practices e.g. creative and scientific, information management, knowledge circulation, sharing; and
conceptions ofrights and domain e.g. IP Constitutionalism, private power etc.
We invite participants to discuss how machines have influenced and challenged regulation over time. It could both be a matter of exploring contemporary challenges to law, speculative or artistic approaches or responses to machine regulation, as well as historical and theoretical discussions on the broad theme of law and machines. We particularly invite contributions on:
creation: e.g. automatic cultural production and invention
immaterial labour: e.g. immaterial machinic production, decision making and creativity
agency: e.g. machinic rights, responsibility and sustainability, artificial intelligence
jurisdiction: e.g. decentralisation, territoriality, smart or technologically intensified spaces
law as machine: e.g. systemic boundaries, ontologies of IP law, convergences of public and private regulation
social engineering in the service of IP objectives: e.g. public goals and constitutionalism, dehumanisation of decision-making, trolls, bots, etc.
Guidelines for contributors
We welcome papers from all academic disciplines. Papers that address this call from an historical, artistic or theoretical perspective are particularly welcomed, as are contributions from scholars working across disciplines or using speculative and alternative methods. Established and junior scholars are encouraged to submit papers.
Proposers should be aware that authors (except for PhD students) do not present their own papers at ISHTIP workshops. Rather, a discussant, normally from a discipline other than the home discipline of the author, presents a brief summary and critique of papers to facilitate a more interdisciplinary discussion and build scholarly discourse across disciplines.
To allow this, complete papers must be submitted by 10 May 2022. The papers should not have been previously published.
To be considered for the workshop, please submit a 300-word abstract of your proposed paper as well as a one-paragraph bio and 2-page CV by 30 January 2022 by email to: merima.bruncevic@law.gu.se
Important dates
Date for Submission of proposals:30 January 2022
Expected Date for notification of acceptance: 10 March 2022
ISHTIP members Prof Graham Dutfield (University of Leeds), Dr Hyo Yoon Kang (Kent Law School), Dr Luke McDonagh (London School of Economics), along with Dr Aisling McMahon (Maynooth University) and Dr Siva Thambisetty (London School of Economics) have drafted an open letter signed by over 100 IP academics in support of the Indian and South African proposal for temporary TRIPS waiver “as a necessary and proportionate legal measure towards the clearing of existing intellectual property barriers to scaling up of production of COVID-19 health technologies in a direct, consistent and effective fashion”.
Drawing upon the history and theory of intellectual property, the letter acknowledges that patents have never been absolute rights. They are monopoly rights granted to serve the public interest. Patents “ must not be allowed to stand in the way of measures designed to make accessible the health technologies needed to fight the COVID-19 pandemic, where universal global access is essential for the global public good.”
Monopolies over tacit and informal information, are also implicated in the current lack of global capacity for vaccine production and other health technologies, as well as in enabling their inequitable distribution.
The letter calls on the governments of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland, Australia, Brazil, Japan, Norway, Switzerland and the European Union to drop their opposition at the World Trade Organisation and to support the TRIPS waiver proposal.
You can read the full letter and list of signatories here:
Co-hosted by Center for Social Critiques of Law, Kent Law School and
International Society for the History and Theory of Intellectual Property (ISHTIP)
Panelists: Graham Dutfield (Leeds) Hyo Yoon Kang (Kent) Fiona Macmillan (Birkbeck) Luke McDonagh (LSE) Aisling McMahon (Maynooth) Alain Pottage (Kent/ SciencesPo) Els Torreele (UCL Institute for Innovation and Public Purpose)
Traditionally IP law, and patent law in particular, had been regarded a legal technical and technocratic subfield. This panel discussion intends to review and discuss the state of the IP scholarship and pedagogy in light of the fissures within the field that have been laid bare at least since the so-called “TRIPS IP waiver” discussion.
Over the course of the pandemic, issues around intellectual property law, especially regarding monopoly rights and trade secrets around the Covid-19 vaccine, have been problematised in general media. These have often centered around the ongoing battle for TRIPS IP waiver since October 2020.
Amidst the ongoing discussions, intellectual property law and particularly patent law, have been catapulted into the public eye. After US threw in its limited support, there has been a divergence of perspectives on the Waiver proposal argued by IP scholars, both in favour and against the proposal and its significance.
Diverse approaches to IP law and its purpose within the scholarship are not new. The current crystallisation of IP law’s current role in the prolonging of the Covid-19 pandemic, however, affords an apt opportunity to take review the scholarly field of of intellectual property law itself and its political and social role.
The panel will discuss existing IP law scholarship and pedagogy, identifying their epistemological and ontological foundations, methodologies, and their relation to the current political economy. It will critically assess the past and present of the IP scholarly field and offer some thoughts for its improvement.
May 20 BST 11am/CET 12 noon/ Pacific 3am/EST 6am/AEST 8pm
‘Cultural Heritage and IP’, Fiona Macmillan (Birkbeck) in conversation with Jose Bellido (Kent) and Kathy Bowrey (UNSW)
The encounter between creativity and cultural production, on the one hand, and legal regulation, on the other, demonstrates the systemic and conceptual limits of the law. It raises a host of questions that traverse – in multiple senses and contexts – distinctions between things like public and private, property and the commons, individual and community, product and process, idea and expression, tangible and intangible, movable and immovable, conservation and destruction, authentic and fake, and, perhaps most fundamentally, nature and culture. This book is about these binary distinctions – about how they hold and how they do not hold – in the context of the legal regimes governing copyright and cultural heritage. While the book argues that these two legal regimes are held together by a common approach to these binary distinctions, they are also held apart by their dominant frames of reference. While copyright as a private property right locates all relationships in the context of the market, the context of cultural heritage relationships is the community, of which the market forms a part but does not – or, at least, should not – control the whole. The current international law concept of cultural heritage, however, is weakened and hollowed out by a fossilized vision of heritage that is not up to the task of resisting the constant impositions of the market. The book proposes a radicalized concept of cultural heritage/property that locates and regulates cultural production within the dynamic and mutually constitutive process of community formation. Only such a concept, the book argues, will provide a basis for resisting the reduction of everything to its value in the market, for resisting the commodification, and creeping propertization, of all our cultural production.
Fiona Macmillan is Professor of Law at Birkbeck, University of London, and Visiting Professor of Law at the University of Roma Tre and the University of Technology, Sydney. She is a member of the ISHTIP Executive Committee. Her new book, Intellectual and Cultural Property. Between Market and Community, was published by Routledge, 2021.
Jose Bellido is Reader in Law at Kent University. He is a member of the ISHTIP Governing Board and a PASSIM project team member.
Kathy Bowrey is Professor at the Faculty of Law & Justice, University of New South Wales and Co-Director, ISHTIP. She is a Visiting Scholar, State Library of NSW (2021) and Research Fellow, Museum of Applied Arts and Sciences, Australia.
To download a transcript of this discussion:
Coming soon
International Society for the History and Theory of Intellectual Property (ISHTIP)
