Mosaic IP Law and Policy Roundtable Conference
The Mosaic IP Law and Policy Roundtable connects IP scholars 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.
About the 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.
Co-hosted by Suffolk University Law School
2025 Theme | IP and the Fabric of Nations
The IP Mosaic Conference is a unique convening of a diverse collective of academic scholars, policy leaders, and activists who meet to consider and critique IP protection. In the conference’s 11th year, the Theme “IP and the Fabric of Nations” seeks to examine narratives and stories about the role that IP plays in knitting communities, peoples and nations together. We are looking for critical examinations of the stories that are told about IP in enabling national excellence in industrial growth, promoting socio-economic empowerment, and solving development challenges, e.g. collaborative approaches to IP production and use across borders such as climate technology cooperation and technology platforms like WIPO Green, or IP as a means of negotiating the international expansion of cultural products such as K-Pop and K-Drama. We are looking for critical examinations of how IP enables storytales of national identity and culture, such as the role of IP in Disney’s capture of European American fairy tales or the complex adoption of the Haka into New Zealand’s sports identity. We seek contributions that allow us to examine how the stories that we tell about IP and the narratives around IP enable inclusion and belonging in national identity-building projects, especially for marginalized peoples and communities.
Program Agenda
*Subject to change
Friday, October 24
9:00 – 9:30 am EDT
1:00 – 1:30 pm GMT
Introductions & Welcome
Rebecca Curtin, Academic Co-Director and Professor of Law, Suffolk IP Center
Lateef Mtima, Professor of Law, Howard University School of Law & Founder and Director, Institute for Intellectual Property and Social Justice (IIPSJ)
9:30 – 11:00 am EDT
1:30 – 3:00 pm GMT
Panel Session: Competition and Collaboration – Political Sovereigns and IP
Moderator: Metka Potočnik, Senior Lecturer in Law, University of Wolverhampton, Law School and Director of The F-List for Music CIC
Presenters:
TBD
11:00 – 11:30 am EDT
3:00 – 3:30 pm GMT
Break
11:30 am – 1:00 pm EDT
3:30 – 5:00 pm GMT
Panel Session: Claiming Space – Diversity in IP Institutional Actors
Moderator: TBD
Presenters:
TBD
1:00 – 2:00 pm EDT
5:00 – 6:00 pm GMT
Lunch Break
2:00 – 3:00 pm EDT
6:00 – 7:00 pm GMT
Plenary Session: Keynote Speaker and Q&A
Moderator: TBD
Panelists:
TBD
3:00 – 3:30 pm EDT
7:00 – 7:30 pm GMT
Break
3:30 – 5:00 pm EDT
7:30 – 9:00 pm GMT
Practitioner and Policymaker Panel: Reflections on IP and Social Justice
Moderator: TBD
Presenters:
TBD
5:00 – 7:00 pm EDT
Reception & HAPPY HOUR for in-person attendees
Saturday, October 25
8:15 – 9:00 am EDT
12:15 – 1:00 pm GMT
Welcome & Breakfast
TBD
9:00 – 10:30 am EDT
1:00 – 2:30 pm GMT
Panel Session: New Rights, New Rightsholders
Moderator: TBD
Presenters:
TBD
10:30 – 11:00 am EDT
2:30 – 3:00 pm GMT
Break
11:00 am – 12:30 pm EDT
3:00 – 4:30 pm GMT
Panel Session: Strategy Session and Prospects
Moderator: Lateef Mtima, Professor of Law, Howard University School of Law & Founder and Director, Institute for Intellectual Property and Social Justice (IIPSJ)
Presenters:
TBD
12:30 – 12:45 pm EDT
4:30 – 4:45 pm GMT
Closing Remarks
Lateef Mtima, Professor of Law, Howard University School of Law & Founder and Director, Institute for Intellectual Property and Social Justice (IIPSJ)
Thank you to our Conference Planning Committee!
Conference Planning Committee
Rebecca Curtin, Suffolk University Law School Dalindyebo Shabalala, Suffolk University Law School
Tuneen Chisolm, Howard University School of Law Metka Potocnik, University of Wolverhampton, Law School
Betsy Rosenblatt, Case Western Reserve University Law School Kara Swanson, Northeastern University School of Law
Lateef Mtima, Howard 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.
IIPSJ Institutional Partners
