Intellectual Property

Technology increasingly impacts our lives in the modern world — from websites and mobile devices that provide education and entertainment to life-saving drugs and medical devices that contribute to our health and safety. Intellectual property laws such as those governing patents, copyrights, trademarks and trade secrets play a key role in providing both incentives to innovate and promote these technologies as well as protections and permissions for the public to enjoy them. They also protect and provide artistic content that we often experience and enjoy using technology. The Samuelson Clinic focuses on working to resolve the tensions that arise from this system of private rights and public interests with the goal of promoting social advancement as well as social justice.

For example, as more and more people use technology to communicate and create, to learn and explore, and to express and expound, the intellectual property laws that govern these technologies often control what we can say, what we read and watch, and even what we can learn. Thus, our very rights to freedom of speech, expression, and education are implicated in how these laws are written and regulated. The Clinic’s advocacy focuses on identifying the impact of these laws on individual and consumer rights in order to ensure their perseverance while remaining committed to adequately rewarding creators and innovators for their inventions and artistic contributions. This includes examination of new technologies such as Digital Rights Management (DRM) and community-based efforts at innovation such as free and open source software projects.

Intellectual property laws can also dictate who has access to life-saving medicines or the latest scientific knowledge. While there must certainly be rewards for companies and individuals who provide us with these resources and discoveries, there must also be opportunity for a wide array of the world to enjoy their benefits. The Clinic’s work in this area strives to help disadvantaged groups and the organizations that serve them increase access to essential medical technologies in order to improve public health and social well-being.

Project Title	Year	Project Type
Clinic files Amicus Brief in Bilski case on behalf of consumer groups; asks court to protect consumers and set serious limits on what patents can cover	2008
Memorandum Addressing the Need for a Treatment Agenda	2002
Neglecting the National Memory: How Copyright Extensions Compromise the Development of Digital Archives	2002