Intellectual Property in Comparative Perspective: Cultural Implications of Technological Change

This is an invitation to apply for an intensive policy-oriented two-week summer seminar on the political and cultural context of intellectual property law, to be held at the Central European University (CEU) in Budapest, Aug 1-12.

The seminar seeks to develop stronger cross-disciplinary and transnational expertise on intellectual property issues. The effort will be to foster better understanding of the relationships between law, the politics of IP governance, and the social processes underlying innovation and creativity. Discussions will pay particular attention to the transnational and national aspects of the debate over "protection" and "misuse," in recognition of the central place of this tension in current policy initiatives; in the organization of cultural creativity, education, and scientific innovation; and in the everyday fabric of cultural life.

The seminar is designed to help law students, communications graduate students, young policy makers, advocates, and faculty deepen their understanding of these issues and engage with perspectives outside their fields of expertise. As intellectual property becomes the default framework for understanding innovation and access to knowledge in all aspects of social life, effective work in this area will increasingly require the ability to work across domains-bridging the legal and the social, the national and the global.

The seminar is an inaugural effort of the Communications and Media Studies Center at CEU . The potential for the seminar is a result of a rich collaboration among several institutions: CEU, the Social Science Research Council, the Stanhope Center for Communications Policy Research in London, the Cardozo School of Law and the Annenberg School for Communication at the University of Pennsylvania.

The seminar will bring together perspectives from around the world and from a range of fields, including law, political economy, sociology, and communications studies. It will also include individuals involved in policy development, industry, and advocacy on IP issues. The seminar will be organized into 20 sessions over 10 days of classes. Sessions will focus on:

• Major intellectual property concepts in historical and comparative perspective.
• Concepts and practices of protection and "misuse" in different sectors, including music, film, software, education, scientific literature, and the development and marketing of pharmaceuticals.
• Competing approaches to thinking about (and institutionalizing) creativity and innovation, from traditional communities to public education to corporate research.
• IP as a development issue, and the tensions among developed and developing countries around definitions, strategies, social needs, and sovereignty.
• The growth of intellectual property as a trade issue, from issue entrepreneurs to bilateral agreements to TRIPS and the WTO.
• Mapping the governance landscape in this area, including the different venues and agreements, levels of jurisdiction, private and public actors, constituencies and social needs they serve, and the politics that surround them.
• Digital challenges to IP regimes, including changing social norms around copying, culture industry adaptations to the digital environment, underlying technological architectures, and emerging strategies of control.

Throughout, the focus will be demonstratively cross-cultural, examining conflicts among approaches in Asia, Africa, and Latin America, as well as Europe and the United States.

The core faculty will include scholars from Europe and the United States including Barton Beebe, associate professor at Cardozo School of Law and C. Edwin Baker, University of Pennsylvania. Monroe E. Price, Visiting Professor at the Annenberg School for Communication, University of Pennsylvania is the director of the seminar. We anticipate that this core will be augmented by individuals presenting case studies from India, Russia and China. Among the subjects to be discussed are the most contested in the field: including the distribution of software, traditional knowledge, access to visual imagery, and the relationship of contract to copyright. Several distinguished members of the CEU faculty will participate in the seminar. As a special feature of the program, several Hungarian institutions engaged in the practical dilemmas of control or access to information will host special meetings for participants.

The participants in the project will be nominated by a variety of organizations, including the sponsoring entities. But we are encouraging participation by additional entities. Sponsorships which cover room and board and faculty costs are $2,500. This does not include participant travel. Scholarships are available.

For more information, contact Gyorgy Petocz in Budapest or Susan Abbott at the Annenberg School for Communication.