External Events 2005 - 2006

ALAI Paris September 2005

Lionel Bently, Bill Cornish and Patricia Akester attended the ALAI Congress 2005, which took place in Paris and was entitled "Exploring the Sources of Copyright." The Congress addressed the origins of copyright, international and regional sources of copyright, interpretation of copyright rules and practice as a source of copyright, also analysing conflicts of norms issues and examining the roles of UNESCO, WIPO and the WTO, negotiation methods within these organisations and the importance of lobbies. Lionel Bently and Bill Cornish presented papers, respectively, on the creation function and on the history of the sources.

New Word Order, SHARP (Society for History of Authorship, Reading and Publishing) Conference, Jadavpur University, Kolkata, India. 30 January –1 February 2006

This conference contained a number of interesting and important papers covering the history of copyright. Graham Law, of Wakeda University in Japan, talked on Wilkie Collins and international copyright relations between Britain and the United State. Lionel Bently talked about the History of Copyright Relations between India and Great Britain in the late Nineteenth Century.  Dr Venkata Chalapathy (Associate Professor at the Madras Institute of Development Studies) gave a fascinating presentation of the various ways in which copyright has been used and misused to promote cultural goals in India: the extension of copyright term to keep the works of Rabindranath Tagore in copyright (a literary equivalent to the notorious extension of copyright in the US so as to keep Mickey Mouse protected) and the Chennai governments compulsory purchase of copyrights relating to 13 key cultural figures, thereby placing them in the public domain. In addition, the conference discussed Rimi Chatterjee’s magnificent new book on the history of Oxford University Press’s Relations with India. (Empires of the Mind. A history of Oxford University Press under the Raj.)

New Directions in Copyright Workshop held at Case Western University in Cleveland, Ohio. 19 April 2006

Lionel Bently gave a paper at the AHRC funded, New Directions in Copyright Workshop held at Case Western University in Cleveland, Ohio. Hosted by Martha Woodmansee, the theme of the workshop was copyright and new technologies. Papers were presented by Birgitte Andersen (Birkbeck), Maurizio Borghi (Bocconi), Kathy Bowrey (UNSW/University of Technology, Sydney), Uma Suthersanen (QMW). Lionel’s paper drew on the theme of ‘when old technologies were new’ to explore intellectual property law’s reaction to an old technology, that of telegraphy. Developing work previously published in the (2004) Loyola (Los Angeles) Law Review, the paper explored debates at the turn of the twentieth century in India and (as it was then known) Ceylon. Whereas in Ceylon, the legislature responded to the use of telegraphy to transmit news by enacting an Ordinance preventing re-use of such information, attempts (from the 1880s) to obtain such a law in India failed. The paper explored the positions of protagonists to attempt to explain why two countries, geographically proximate to one another, should adopt such divergent positions. Further details of the conference, including abstracts, are available at AHRC Copyright Research Network

Con/texts on Invention Conference at Case Western University, Cleveland. 20 - 22 April 2006

A further conference was held at Case Western entitled Con/texts of Invention and organised by Martha Woodmansee, Peter Jaszi and Mario Biagioli. Under the aegis of the Society for Critical Exchange, this was an inter-disciplinary exploration of cultural and technological creativity (and its ownership). The conference boasted an international body of contributors, and topics ranged widely from the history of protection of plants, to the tensions between the public domain and traditional knowledge. Lionel Bently chaired a panel of papers concerned with the author construct by Lisa Gitelman, Clifford Siskin and William Warner, Peter Yu and Jane Gaines. Details of the conference and abstracts are available at Con/texts of Invention: A working conference

Lionel Bently’s comments highlighted the failure of contemporary critical discourse to de-throne the author construct, and pointed towards the possibility that those opposed to continued expansion of IPRs might be better to embrace authorship as a tool in their campaign than to focus on the construct as the cause of these ills. Professor Bently plans to explore this theme further in the Horace Manges lecture at Columbia University in April 2006.

ALAI Study Days 2006, Barcelona. 19 - 20 June 2006

The ALAI Study Days 2006 were held in Barcelona and hosted by the University (under the careful stewardship of Raquel Xabalarder). The theme of the conference was copyright and freedom of expression. Lionel Bently presented a short paper on copyright and parody, in which he compared the approaches of various common law systems (highlighting, incidentally, their notable lack of uniformity). While US fair use jurisprudence represented particularly by Campbell v Acuff Rose suggests that parody is more likely to be regarded as fair dealing than satire, Canadian (Michelin) and Australian (The Panel case) authorities on the fair dealing for criticism and review defence hint at the opposite outcome.

Wittem Group of European Copyright Harmonization, Barcelona.  21 June 2006

Taking advantage of the presence of many copyright specialists in one location, the Wittem Group on European copyright harmonization met to consider the question of moral rights at the Open University of Barcelona.

Global Convergence and Divergence, Birkbeck. 27 - 28 June 2006

Lionel Bently chaired a panel on Global convergence and Divergence at the Birkbeck AHRC New Directions in Copyright conference on June 27 & 28. The panel comprised inter alia Professor Graeme Dinwoodie (Chicago Kent and QMW) who discussed international copyright, asking what if anything was different about international norm-setting than norm-creation at national level; Professor Joost Smiers and Marieke van Schijndel (Utrecht School of Arts), who presented their radical plan for a world without copyright (or a much briefer period of exclusivity); Louise Longdin (University of Auckland) who discussed the law and politics of parallel trade; and Dr Christophe Germann, who discussed issues of cultural diversity in a world of globalised intellectual property rights. Their papers and abstracts are available from AHRC Copyright Research Network.

Singapore IP Academy’s Global Forum on Intellectual Property, Singapore. 21 - 22 August 2006

Lionel Bently also gave a paper at the Singapore IP Academy’s Global Forum on Intellectual Property. Amongst the highlights of the conference were the keynote papers of Professors Reto Hilty (MPI) on problems and challenges facing copyright law, Judge Joachin Bornkamm on the extended scope of trade mark law, Hugh Laddie (UCL) on databases and Bill Cornish on the lessons of history. Further details are available at Global Forum. Lionel Bently’s presentation was entitled "Whither (or wither) copyright?"

ATRIP Parma, 4 - 6 September 2006

Organised by the current Chairman, Professor Gustavo Ghidini, the theme of the conference was Intellectual Property and Market Power. Lionel Bently gave a paper entitled "From Communication to Thing: Historical Reflections on The Conceptualisation of Trade Marks as Property". The full paper will be published in  "Trademark Law & Theory: A Handbook of Contemporary Research", G. Dinwoodie & M. Janis (eds.), (Edward Elgar, 2007).

University of Oslo, 7 September 2006

A workshop on the Law relating to Confidential Information took place at the University of Oslo on September 11, 2006, organised by Harald Ingens-Jansen. Papers were given by Erlin Hjelmeng (Oslo), Tom Vapaavuori (Helsinki) and Sören Őman (Deputy Chair of the Swedish Labour Court). Lionel Bently gave a talk on the subject matter of "Protection in the English Law of Confidence".