MOSAIC IP LAW AND POLICY ROUNDTABLE 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                                                    Janewa Osei-Tutu, Florida International University

Tuneen Chisolm, Howard University School of Law                                                                                   Metka Potocnik, University of Wolverhampton, Law School

Nicole Morris, Emory Law                                                                                                                           Srividhya Ragavan, Texas A&M School of Law

Lateef Mtima, Howard University School of Law                                                                                        Betsy Rosenblatt, The University of Tulsa, College of Law

Kali Murray, Marquette University Law School                                                                                           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