IP Mosaic
MOSAIC IP LAW AND POLICY ROUNDTABLE CONFERENCE
Through these conferences, IP scholars can work together with political activists, practicing attorneys, community organizers, and policy makers to produce activist scholarship, to collaborate on various IP Empowerment policy initiatives and projects, and to otherwise help to shape and effectuate a progressive and contemporary IP socio-legal agenda.
October 27-28, 2023
Online & In-person Conference
Ninth Annual IP Mosaic Conference
Co-hosted by University of Illinois Chicago Law
300 S State St, Chicago, IL
The IP Mosaic Conference is a unique convening of a diverse collective of academics, policy leaders and activists who meet to consider and critique IP protection. IP rights should advance social justice and ethical practices. However, when rights are abused or infringed they can also foster IP wrongs. As we encounter technologies like generative AI in our daily lives it is crucial that we evaluate how our IP laws can keep pace, to protect not only creators and innovators, but consumers and the public. What social justice impacts should we be interested in when considering businesses like data aggregators and miners, producers and distributors in the global information age? How should we understand privacy issues in relation to IP? And should any ethical norms govern competition between corporations or impact scientific investigation and discovery?
Theme: IP Rights and Wrongs: Advancing Social Justice and Ethics
Program Schedule
Friday, October 27, 2023 9:30 – 4:45 pm (CDT)/2:30 – 9:45 pm (GMT)
Saturday, October 28, 2023 9:30 – 3:45 pm (CDT)/2:30 – 8:45 pm (GMT)
Friday, October 27, 2023
9:30-9:45 am CDT
Welcome & Remarks
Yolanda M. King, Director & Associate Professor of Law, Center for Intellectual Property, Information & Privacy Law, University of Illinois Chicago School of Law
Lateef Mtima, Professor of Law, Howard University School of Law & Founder and Director, Institute for Intellectual Property and Social Justice (IIPSJ)
9:45 – 10:50 am CDT
Plenary Session: International IP and Climate Change
Moderator: TBD
Metka Potočnik, Senior Lecturer in Law, University of Wolverhampton, Law School and Director of The F-List for Music CIC.
Panelists:
Marion (Amy) Dietterich, World Intellectual Property Organization, Global Challenges Division.
Antony Taubman, World Trade Organization, Intellectual Property Division.
10:50 – 11:00 am CDT
Break
11:00 – 12:35 pm CDT
Panel I: IP & Tech
Moderator: Sandra Aistars
Presenters:
Blake E Reid, Copyright’s First Responder Problem.
Betsy Rosenblatt, Considering the Role of Fairness In Copyright Fair Use.
—5 min Break–
Lantagne, Automating Creative Effort: Free-Riding in an age of Artificial Intelligence
Liza Vertinsky, Patents, Partnerships and AI Innovation Policy.
12:35 – 1:30 pm CDT
Lunch Break
1:30 – 2:55 pm CDT
Panel 2: 2023 Ben Liu Scholars
Moderator: Jasmine Abdel-khalik, Professor, UMKC School of Law
Presenters:
Elizabeth Ivwurie, Advancing Intellectual Property Social Justice in the Nigerian Creative Industries: Challenges, Opportunities, and the Path Forward.
Anupriya Dhonchak, A Feminist Approach to Publicity Rights in India.
—5 min Break–
Kay Dunn, Misappropriating Scottish Traditional Knowledge: Empowering Community Ownership Through IP Rights.
Ondrej Woznica, Unraveling the Value Gap: How Property Metaphors Shape Copyright Policy.
2:55 – 3:05 pm CDT
Break
3:05 – 3:45 pm CDT
Panel 3: THE ROLE OF PATENT LAW: from Technicalities to Social Correctives?
Moderator: TBD
Presenters:
Sandra L Rierson and Mimi Afshar, HBCU’s Paving the Road to Recovery from Slavery, Jim Crow, and Persistent Racial Disparities in the USPTO.
Jordi Goodman, The Uncultured PHOSITA.
3:45-4:45 pm CDT TBD
5:00 – 7:00 pm CDT
HAPPY HOUR for in-person attendees
Saturday, October 28, 2023
9:30 – 9:45 am CDT
Opening Remarks
Yolanda M. King, Director & Associate Professor of Law, Center for Intellectual Property, Information & Privacy Law, University of Illinois Chicago School of Law
Lateef Mtima, Professor of Law, Howard University School of Law & Founder and Director, IIPSJ
9:45 – 11:10 am CDT
Panel 5: IP and SOCIAL ACTION: Ways to Empowerment?
Moderator: Jasmine Abdel-khalik, Professor, UMKC School of Law
Presenters:
Michael P Goodyear, Queer Trademarks.
Bhamati Viswanathan, Women’s Work.
—5 min Break–
Amanda Levendowski, Hard Truths About Soft IP.
Victoria F Phillips, Intellectual Property Clinics—Helping to Empower All Creators.
11:10 – 11:20 am CDT
Break
11:20 – 12:35 pm CDT
Plenary Session: Copyright Behind Bars: At the Intersection of Systemic Incarceration and IP Social Justice
Moderator: John R. Whitman, Ph.D., author, Executive Director, Museum for Black Innovation and Entrepreneurship
Panelists:
Jeanie Austin, Ph.D., Librarian, Jail and Reentry Services, San Francisco Public Library
Wendy Jason, Founder and Director, Justice Arts Coalition, nonprofit national network for those creating art in and around the criminal justice system invited
Doran Larson, Ph.D., Professor of Literature, Hamilton College and Founder and Co-Director of the American Prison Writing Archive
Viva R. Moffat, Professor of Law, Co-Director, Intellectual Property and Technology Law Program, Sturm College of Law, University of Denver, advocating for IP rights for currently/formerly incarcerated and society
Fury Young, Founder and Co-Executive Director, Die Jim Crow, the first nonprofit record label for currently and formerly incarcerated artists
12:35 – 1:35 pm CDT
Lunch Break
1:35 – 3:45 pm CDT
Panel 3: MUSIC CREATORS AND SOCIETY: System Reboot or Reform to Building Better Partnerships?
Moderator: TBD
Meredith Rose, Streaming in the Dark: Lessons and Reforms from Behind the NDA Curtain.
Olufunmilayo Arewa, Margaret Chon, and Jacqueline Lipton, Incentive to Create or to Exploit? Music Creation and Copyright Abuse.
–5 min Break–
Metka Potočnik, Misogyny in Music: a Feminist Reading of Performers’ Rights.
Benjamin Bierman, The Music Business, the Other 99 Percent.
–5 min Break–
Sean O’Connor, Copyright as a Matter of Style.
Gilden and Subotnik, Copyright’s Capacity Gap
3:45 pm CDT
Closing Remarks
Lateef Mtima, Professor of Law, Howard University School of Law & Founder and Director, IIPSJ
About the IP Mosaic Conference
Each IP Mosaic Conference is typically organized around a specific IP social justice legal issue, policy, or socio-economic challenge. Representative conference themes include equitable access to health, medicines, knowledge, and information; socially beneficial application of information technology and related advances to IP development and dissemination; legal protection for traditional and indigenous knowledge and expression; and promoting IP awareness, education, and entrepreneurial and socio-political empowerment in marginalized communities. The conference format is principally comprised of paper or project presentation sessions and plenary panel discussions. In addition, keynote presentations and “incubator project” and work in progress sessions are also mainstays of the conference.
The Pragmatic Intersection of Scholarly Analysis and Law and Policy Development
IP protection is intended to play an important role in engendering human development and actualization toward the greater societal good. The traditional tools and experience of scholarly analysis, reflection, and discourse, however, are not always readily adaptive toward targeted social action, or what is sometimes referred to as “public intellectualism”. Through the IP Mosaic Conference, IP scholars engage with social activists, practicing attorneys, and policy makers to produce “activist scholarship”, to collaborate on various “IP Empowerment” policy initiatives and projects, and to otherwise help to shape and effectuate a progressive and contemporary IP socio-legal agenda.
Conference Planning Committee
Jasmine Abdel-Khalik, University of Missouri-Kansas City School of Law Kali Murray, Marquette University Law School
Sandra Aistars, George Mason University Law School Janewa Osei-Tutu, Florida International University
Tuneen Chisolm, Howard University School of Law Metka Potocnik, University of Wolverhampton, Law School
Yolanda M. King, University of Illinois Chicago Law Betsy Rosenblatt, The University of Tulsa, College of Law
Lateef Mtima, Howard University School of Law Kara Swanson, Northeastern University School of Law
Since 2014, IIPSJ has sponsored the IP Mosaic Conference. Through the IP Mosaic, IIPSJ collaborates with a law school host to provide a venue in which to explore the social ordering function of IP protection in the total political economy, particularly the law’s social justice obligations in promoting human rights and actualization, cultural and technological progress, and self-determination and nation-building. 
The IP Mosaic Conference was established to bring together scholars, law and policy makers, and social activists of diverse and multicultural backgrounds and perspectives to explore progressive, social justice-oriented ideas in intellectual property law, policy, and social activism. Beginning in the late twentieth century, digital information technology and other innovations sparked a paradigm shift in scholarly assessment of the social ordering function of IP protection, exposing the need to critically examine the law’s social justice obligations in promoting human rights, self-determination, cultural progress, and nation-building and evolution. IP law and policy makers traditionally value scholarly analyses in their development and interpretation of IP protection. Progressive, social justice-oriented IP scholarship, especially when infused with the experience and insights of policy makers and social activists, can provide the doctrinal basis for shaping a more socially responsible IP legal regime.
Institutional Partners
