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Microsoft Gives $1 Million to Berkeley Center for Law & Technology

Date: June 14, 2005
Attention: Law, Tech and Business Reporters
Contact: Boalt Hall Communications
Molly Colin 510-642-4143
Dan Brekke 510-643-6157

Berkeley--In a unique partnership aimed toward developing and understanding new research on cutting-edge law and technology policy issues, Microsoft Corp. will give $1 million to the Berkeley Center for Law & Technology (BCLT) at the University of California, Berkeley School of Law (Boalt Hall).

The Microsoft gift will sponsor roughly two BCLT faculty research projects a year. It provides the BCLT brain trust of scholars, whose areas of expertise range from patent and copyright to cyber law, the opportunity to meet with Microsoft each spring to discuss their research interests for the coming year and for each partner to weigh in on areas they believe are of particular import.
  
"The exchange contemplated between BCLT scholars and Microsoft lawyers and technologists will be invaluable for deepening our understanding of the real-world consequences of legal and policy changes that we wish to recommend, especially now that patent reform is under serious consideration in Congress," said Pamela Samuelson, a BCLT director and distinguished expert in the areas of copyright, software protection and cyber law.

"We are looking forward to the opportunity to interact with such a distinguished group of scholars," said Brad Smith, senior vice president and general counsel for Microsoft. "This collaboration will enable our employees to discuss important issues facing the technology industry with some of the most respected researchers in the field."

Microsoft will give a total of $1 million to BCLT over the next four years in the amount of $250,000 each year to provide support for research on forward-looking law and technology policy issues. From the annual contribution, $100,000 will be available each year to support the research of BCLT faculty and affiliated scholars at UC Berkeley, and $150,000 will be placed in a term endowment to be spent over a ten-year period. Funds from the term endowment will be used to establish a Microsoft Fellow in Law Technology.

"The Microsoft Fellows program will enable BCLT to leverage the talent and energy of Boalt's stellar high-tech faculty," said Samuelson, a 1997 MacArthur Foundation "Genius" award recipient. "We expect it to attract talented young scholars to work on projects with our faculty to make contributions on cutting-edge law and technology issues, such as regulation of spyware, information privacy, intellectual property and antitrust in dynamic industries."

For 2005-06, Microsoft has chosen to support the research of Professors Robert Merges, a BCLT director and patent law expert, and Samuelson. Merges' project is focused on defining patent "trolls" and exploring the policy issues they raise as well as the doctrinal implications. Samuelson will investigate secondary liability of technology developers for copyright infringement by users with some discussion of inducement as a theory of liability.

Microsoft's gift follows the appointment of renowned patent expert and policy specialist Robert Barr to head the 10-year old BCLT. Barr, currently vice president of intellectual property and worldwide patent counsel for Cisco Systems, will join BCLT on July 1. The gift and the hiring of Barr build on the efforts of Boalt Hall Dean Christopher Edley to catalyze the talent and energy of BCLT faculty and make the center a focus point for translating research into policy.

Ranked by U.S. News & World Report as the country's top law and technology program for the eighth consecutive year, BCLT has established itself as the premier national think tank on the legal implications for new technologies. The center is active in judicial education and plans to co-sponsor events with the National Academy of Sciences. Next year BCLT will co-host, with the Boalt-based Berkeley Center for Law, Business and the Economy (BCLBE), a conference on stem cell research and patent reform.

On a global level, BCLT co-organized the January 2005 international digital rights symposium in Berlin . Its ninth international conference, held in Berkeley in April, focused on spyware's regulatory challenges. www.law.berkeley.edu/institutes/bclt .

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