BCLT’s conferences bring together law firm attorneys, in-house counsel, judges, academics and others to explore the latest in patent law, privacy, life sciences, AI and other rapidly developing areas of technology law. Panels at our annual symposia present the diverse perspectives of government officials, advocates and academics.
Most past events are still available for CLE credit on B-CLE.
7th Annual BTLJ-BCLT Fall Race & Technology Symposium
Fri.
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Location: B-CLE Join the Berkeley Technology Law Journal and the Berkeley Center for Law and Technology for our 7th Annual Race and Technology Symposium exploring what it means to be human when machines can read our attention, clone our voices, judge our applications, and act on our behalf. |
The Seventh Berkeley-Tsinghua Conference: Transnational IP in an Age of AI and Global Competition
Thurs.
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Location: Tsinghua Law School / Zoom Since its launch in 2018, the Berkeley-Tsinghua Conference has served as a platform for scholars, judges, practitioners, policymakers, and industry leaders from China, the United States, and beyond to exchange views on some of the most important developments in intellectual property law. Over the past eight years, the global innovation landscape has undergone profound transformation. AI has emerged as a general-purpose technology reshaping both creative and inventive processes. Chinese companies have become increasingly active participants in global innovation ecosystems. At the same time, geopolitical tensions, regulatory fragmentation, and new forms of technological competition have created fresh challenges for intellectual property systems around the world. |
19th Annual BCLT Privacy Lecture
Thurs.
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“Witness”: Compulsory Process at the Founding and its Consequences Today What did the Founders mean by “witnesses”? Founding-era research reveals that “witnesses” originally meant far more than live testimony — reaching hearsay, documents, and physical evidence. The Supreme Court has since narrowed that word for confrontation and self-incrimination purposes, an inconsistency now drawing interest from Justices Alito, Thomas, and Gorsuch. Get the definition right, and it could determine whether defendants can confront the AI systems behind their evidence, and whether the Fifth Amendment protects GenAI prompts, biometric data, and digital trails like CSLI. This talk maps out where that reasoning leads — and why it matters now. Commentators: |
The Second Berkeley Global Conference on AI and IP: Human Intelligence, Human Creativity and Human Dignity in the AI Era
Fri.
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Location: Seaborg, Faculty Club, UC Berkeley The Second Berkeley Global Conference on AI and IP builds on our 2025 inaugural conference, Intellectual Property and Human Creativity in the AI Age: A Global Conversation. As frontier models, AI agents, and open-weight systems reshape creation and invention, AI may expand human creativity — or diminish the recognition and value of human work. That is not predetermined; it turns on the legal choices we make today. Scholars, judges, practitioners, and creators across jurisdictions will examine authorship and inventorship, training on creative works, licensing, platform power, and regulatory arbitrage, asking whether different legal traditions can converge on a framework in which AI serves human dignity and creators keep agency and a fair share of the value they produce. |
27th Annual Berkeley-Stanford Advanced Patent Law Institute
Dec 3-4,
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Location: Stanford University, Palo Alto, CA Two days of in-depth discussions on patent law with panels of leading experts. |
If you require an accommodation for effective communication (ASL interpreting/CART captioning, alternative media formats, etc.) to fully participate in an event, please contact Richard Fisk at rpfisk@berkeley.edu with as much advance notice as possible and at least 7 business days in advance of the event.