The inaugural Conference on Intellectual Property (CIP) will be held in June

John Walter posted info on this intriguing sounding conference on techrhet. I was not familiar with the spectacular and provocative work of Joy Garnett. Her work is something worthy of further exploration and analysis by folks in rhetoric & comp.

The inaugural Conference on Intellectual Property (CIP) will be held on June 12-13th 2009 at Iona College in New Rochelle, NY, and will include keynote addresses by Laura M. Quilter, M.L.S., J.D. and painter Joy Garnett.

Whether it be the submission of student papers to plagiarism-detecting websites, the marketing of a movie that chronicles the challenges of a windshield wiper inventor, or the latest debates over the application of nonobvious intention, issues involving intellectual property in the academic, economic, legal, and technological fields challenge the very notion of ownership: what we own, how we own, and who may claim ownership. The purpose of this conference is to explore intellectual property, in a cross-disciplinary context, as both a concept and a reality relating to the professional fields whose concerns intersect in understanding its essence and implications.

We invite papers and panels dealing with any and all aspects of intellectual property, from the origins of eighteenth-century literary property debates to the viability and ethics of plagiarism and plagiarism detection, from the economic impact of patents to the technological advances that may make intellectual property obsolete. We especially encourage papers/panels that embrace a multidisciplinary or interdisciplinary approach.

CIP papers and/or abstracts will be included in a conference proceedings, and selected essays may be published in a proposed collection for a peer-reviewed press.

Papers/Panel abstracts should be submitted by February 5th, 2009 to Dr. Amy Stackhouse at astackhouse@iona.edu or Dr. Dean Defino at ddefino@iona.edu. We look forward to a fruitful and collegial experience. For more information, please see the conference website at www.iona.edu/cip.

Keynote Speakers:

Laura Quilter is an attorney and researcher in technology and information law and policy. Laura's research and practice particularly focuses on the rights of information users, including consumers, libraries, creators, and scientists, and she regularly speaks and writes on these matters. She earned her law degree from Boalt Hall School of Law, University of California, Berkeley, in 2003, and her library science degree from the University of Kentucky in 1993. http://lquilter.net/professional/briefbio.html

http://lquilter.net/index.php

Painter Joy Garnett appropriates news and documentary photographs from newspapers, internet and other media, and re-invents them as paintings. Her work mines the tensions between the open-ended narratives of art, and ubiquitous media representations of real-life events. Ms. Garnett's work has been exhibited in museums and galleries around the world, including the Whitney Museum of American Art in NYC, the National Academy of Sciences in Washington, D.C., and the Witte Zaal in Ghent, Belgium, and reproduced in numerous publications, from Harper's to Cabinet magazine. In 2004, she was awarded a grant by the Anonymous Was a Woman foundation, and she currently serves as Arts Editor for Cultural Politics, a refereed journal published by Berg in Oxford, UK.

http://www.firstpulseprojects.com/joy.html

"Naturally Self Replicating": Human Bodies and Webtexts (and plants)

Technologies which are “naturally self replicating” fly in the face of US copyright law – or international intellectual property agreements as well.

Two technologies that are naturally self replicating that come to mind immediately are:

1. The Human Body
2. The Digital Webtext

Mapping on copyright law to “bodies,” the argument would go something like this. Under US copyright law, anything that is original and fixed is protected. Think about your mother. Was she original? Probably yes, if according to US law via the Feist opinion, she exhibited or contained a “modicum of creativity.” Was she fixed? Well probably for the most part at least on the outside. OK, so we can pretend that your mother was copyrighted.

Then there is you. Under US law, an item can be copyright infringing if it is substantially similar to the pre-existing item, and its creator had access to this pre-existing item. It doesn’t have to be conscious awareness, just access at some time. The case in point is the George Harrison – Chiffons case where Harrison’s “My Sweet Lord” was alleged to infringe on “She’s so Fine.” While Harrison did nothing intentionally, he did admit that he listened to the Chiffons when he was growing up, so the court found copyright infringement because “My Sweet Lord” was substantially similar to “He’s So Fine,” and Harrison had access even though he didn’t really consciously remember that until prompted during court testimony.

Intention doesn’t matter in copyright for the most part, because copyright is a strict liability law.

So, you ask yourself, are you substantially similar to your mother, and did you have access? Hum. Well I was talking about “bodies,” so I’m sure if you are the biological child of your mother, using various disciplining technologies of the medical field, someone could make the plausible argument in the affirmative to both inquires.

But US copyright law will obviously never be applied in this situation. The reason is that it would too visibly acknowledge that bodies are propertied, which is actually true. But the fact the copyright law can’t apply also is because human bodies are “naturally self-replicating.” Copyright law tries to assign exclusive rights to reproduce an artifact to its creator.

The reason I think of this twisted example, is because an international group, the International Union for the Protection of New Varieties of Plants (UPOV), is debating how to protect plant varieties. According to this article, the issue is as follows:

“Effective intellectual property protection on plant varieties is a challenge, as the technology is by nature self-replicating. Antonio Villarreol, managing director of GESLIVE, an association of plant breeders based in Spain, said there were cases in which seeds from proprietary fruit varieties purchased in a market (where purchasers would never see the technology use agreement) had been replanted and propagated.

‘From the first point of sale, control becomes diluted,’ said Chris Green, director of Senova, a crop development and plant breeding company. Farms save seed, rather than buying new seeds, and sometimes fail to pay royalties on the saved seed, for instance.”

Yep. The western model of naming, owning, and individuating does not work in cultures that just don’t see the world that way. And the reason copyright law doesn’t really do much in the context of Digital Webtexts, at least according to my research, is because, Digital Webtexts, like Human Bodies, are naturally self-replicating.

The full article is here:

http://www.ip-watch.org/weblog/index.php?p=1298

Doan Honey, Mocha Coffee, Olive Oil Soap

An new group has been formed through the Arab League: the Arab Society for Geographical Indications (ASGI).

This society seeks to protect Arab products through international intellectual property agreements, namely TRIPS.

TRIPS, the Trade-Related Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights Agreement, a World Trade Organization agreement, defines Geographical Indicators in Article 22:

“indications which identify a good as originating in the territory of a member, or a region or locality in that territory, where a given quality, reputation or other characteristic of the good is essentially attributable to its geographical origin.”

Some example items:

Doan honey from Yemen (Doan is a famous valley in the Hadramout area)

Mocha coffee from Yemen

Oman’s Halva

Masafi from the United Arab Emirates

Olive oil soap from Nablus in Palestine

Water from al Feejah spring in Syria

Lebanese tabbouleh

Argan oil from morocco

These discussions of geographical indicators are always interesting because they embody examples of resistance to cultural appropriation, but this resistance is trying to be accomplished within the western paradigm of naming, owning, and individuating. I am always reminded as well, that although cyberspace connects us, in many ways our identities are still tied to place, topos, literally real property. I also find these discussions interesting because when I read the “origins” of items I am familiar with, my reaction is always: “I never knew that came from there”!

A full story on this topic is located in the Intellectual Property Watch

http://www.ip-watch.org/weblog/index.php?p=1289

Invention and Power

One of the questions I had in my dissertation, which remains unanswered, is what is the connection between power and invention. Yesterday, I watched a webcast of David Gervais, a Canadian Law Professor speaking on TRIPS. Some of the things he discussed related to what I discussed in my dissertation, because I asserted that power and invention are deeply connected - since invention often is the result of the exertion of power. Gervais was talking about an international agreement, but one thing he asked is what is the role of the state in innovation (in rhetoric and writing we'd call innovation invention). He pointed out that China, which has much less free speech rights, and is more authoritarian in its approach to "state," is second in the world in innovation (R&D). So, the question is, to what extent is invention forced? I mean, does invention happen outside a democracy - as based on my research I'd say absolutely yes. In fact, those who are oppressed tend to be extremely inventive. So this is something to think about when you consider things like "pre-writing" and "free writing." Things I've never done in my professional writing life. I have never done "clustering." I mean as a writer. I've used this in the classroom. But I've never done this myself, as a professional writer. These are strategies that lack force or power, and so I'm not sure if they even work. I'm really not sure. These are strategies that seem pretty "fake" to me at the present moment in time. On the other hand, I'm not saying you should oppress your students. :)

Yet, I personally prefer a teacher who knows how to get power and use it to benefit me.

Check out slide 52 and I'm ordering Reich's new book.

http://media.wcl.american.edu/Mediasite/Viewer/Viewers/Viewer320TL.aspx?mode=Default&peid=43710126-b1a9-4c3a-8b2e-f68a3ace1bc9&playerType=WM64Lite&mode=Default&shouldResize=true&pid=66e32036-007a-4e06-a66f-b98d4018c232&playerType=WM64Lite#

My Guest Blogging Appearance on Beyondwords

http://beyondwordsblog.com/2008/10/15/guest-blog-copyright-and-digital-writing/

Typosquatting - a method to profit from error

As I stated in my dissertation, misunderstanding and confusion are productive, and apparently Google is capitalizing on that. Subsequently, a Harvard Business School professor whose research and digital writing focuses on the electronic age, is suing Google for it practice of capitalizing on error. That is, Google creates websites near in URL to existing websites, and then relies on users to make typos. When users visit these websites in error, they are provided with a number of advertisements - by which venture Google makes lots of money.

A quote from the article: "A typosquatting Web site has an address almost identical to that of another Web site, and is designed to capitalize on internet users’ typos by exposing them to advertisements, according to Edelman, whose research focuses on electronic marketplaces and online advertising fraud."

The full text is here: http://www.thecrimson.com/article.aspx?ref=524698

How to read a legal opinion

I came across this absolutely fantastic, short, article on how to read a legal opinion. While it states its audience is first year law students, it is a great reading for anyone who wants to read a legal opinion and is having trouble. I know people who are very smart, but not used to reading legal opinions, and have told me that to them it was like reading another language.

The article is " How to Read a Legal Opinion: A Guide for New Law Students," by Orin S. Kerr of the George Washington University Law School and it is only about 16 pages.

You can download it free here:
http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=1160925