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September 2022 IP and Social Justice Newsletter

Catch up on posts from our September newsletter.

Meet Our Inaugural Wikimedia Race and Knowledge Equity Fellow – Shreyanka Mirchandani Changaroth

Shreyanka is the Wikimedia Race and Knowledge Equity Fellow (“WKRE”) for the 2022-23 academic year. Her research interests lie at the intersection of law, technology, and social justice. In particular, she aims to tackle issues relating to digital inequity, privacy and surveillance, and how the existing legal and technology landscape plays a role in nurturing and perpetuating systemic inequities. During her time as WRKE fellow, she hopes to explore the various ways in which the IP regime may be dissected and overhauled to advance free knowledge objectives, and to bridge global and national digital divides.

Shreyanka obtained her LL.B. from the University of Nottingham in the UK, her LL.M. in Law and Technology from the University of Ottawa in Ontario, and was called to the Singapore bar in 2016. She previously worked in private practice both as a litigation and corporate lawyer, before moving into the technology and innovations industry.

Shreyanka on her interest in this fellowship:

“The advancement of technology has contributed and created divides that the law has been notoriously ill-equipped to tackle. However, these problems represent brand new opportunities to dismantle the inequitable foundations upon which our society has rested for centuries. Knowledge might still be the dominion of the powers that be, but the promise of digitization means that opportunities abound for us to set knowledge and humanity free.”

Wikimedia Race and Knowledge Equity Fellowship Program

Howard University School of Law (HUSL) and the Institute for Intellectual Property and Social Justice (IIPSJ) were awarded a grant to establish the Wikimedia Race and Knowledge Equity (WRKE) Fellowship Program, a one-year full-time fellowship designed to explore the intersections between racial equity, free knowledge, and the intellectual property ecosystem and to promote sound policy for achieving social justice through these overlapping disciplines.

The WRKE Fellow will be expected to undertake scholarly and other research, produce public intellectual writings and scholarly publications likely to make a significant contribution to free knowledge and racial equity scholarship, and to organize and present policy and community educational programming relevant to the Fellowship’s research and education agenda. The WRKE Fellowship Program is funded through the Knowledge Equity Fund at the Wikimedia Foundation, the non-profit organization which operates and supports the free online encyclopedia Wikipedia and several other collectively-produced free knowledge projects. The Foundation’s mission is to ensure everyone, everywhere can equitably access and share knowledge online.

IP Social Justice Articles & Information of Interest

Copyright Office Announces Open Application Period for Ringer Fellowship

Author’s Alliance blog post: The RAP ACT: Protecting Creative Expression in Court

Copyright Office Expands Recordation System Access to the Public

USPTO Journey of Innovation Series: A family of entrepreneurs: Mika’il and Ayaan Naqvi

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