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 University of California, Irvine School of Law
2026 Theme | Information and Knowledge Migration
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. This year we are prompted by the idea of migration across borders: whether physical or disciplinary, such as movement of ideas, peoples, information, or knowledge bases. We welcome papers and projects that specifically address the intersection of intellectual property and social justice and/or information/knowledge migration, particularly with respect to race, gender, class or other social identities, constructs, and conditions, as well as papers and projects that specifically address the social justice effects and obligations of the intellectual property regime, from rewarding originality and innovation, to promoting human development and self-actualization, to meeting the health, education, and socio-economic empowerment needs of the global society.
Program Agenda
*Subject to change
Friday, November 6
9:00 – 9:30 am PDT
4:00 – 4:30 pm GMT
Welcome & Remarks
TBD, University of California, Irvine School of Law
Lateef Mtima, Professor of Law, Howard University School of Law & Founder and Director, Institute for Intellectual Property and Social Justice (IIPSJ)
9:30 – 10:45 am PDT
4:30 – 5:45 pm GMT
Plenary Session 1: INTERNATIONAL AI NETWORKS ACROSS BORDERS
Moderator: Metka Potočnik, Senior Lecturer in Law, University of Wolverhampton, Law School and Director of The F-List for Music CIC
Panelists:
Anna Vuopala, Senior Ministerial Adviser, Government of Finland
Dafna Feinholz, Chief of the Bioethics and Ethics of Science and Technology Section, UNESCO
10:45 – 11:00 am PDT
5:45 – 6:00 pm GMT
Break
11:00 am – 1:00 pm PDT
6:00 – 8:00 pm GMT
Panel 1: COPYRIGHT AND KNOWLEDGE MIGRATION
Moderator: TBD, TBD
Presenters:
Maggie Chon, Fostering Global Scientific Knowledge Exchange through GenAI: A Development Approach to Copyright
Michael P. Goodyear, Licensing and Loss
Stephen M. Wolfson, The implications of generative AI for the Open Access movement
–Break–
Chinwe Ohanele, Copyright as Safe Passage: Securing the Corridor Between Creation and the World
Justin Koo, Exporting Fair Use
1:00 – 1:45 pm PDT
8:00 – 8:45 pm GMT
Lunch Break
1:45 – 3:15 pm PDT
8:45 – 10:15 pm GMT
Plenary Session 2: TBD
Moderator: TBD, TBD
Panelists: TBD, TBD
3:15 – 3:30 pm PDT
10:15 – 10:30 pm GMT
Break
3:30 – 5:00 pm PDT
10:30 pm – 12:00 am GMT
Panel 2: PATENTS, AI AND KNOWLEDGE SYSTEMS
Moderator: TBD, TBD
Presenters:
Wentong Zheng, Global FRAND Rate Setting: Do U.S. Courts Adhere (More) to Territoriality?
Nate Gotora, When Green Hydrogen Technology Moves: Patents and Local Adaptation in South Africa
Muhammad Zaheer Abbas (and Amina Tariq), AI–CRISPR Convergence: Patent Law and Equitable Access to Gene-Editing Therapeutics
Mutoniwase Mbaya Aroobe, Digital Colonialism, AI, and the Cross-Border Migration of African Knowledge: Rethinking Intellectual Property Justice in the Global South
–Break–
Andrew Farrior et al. (with Lateef Mtima), The Migration of Cultural Knowledge into AI Systems: Toward a Fourth Pillar of Digital Public Infrastructure
Gal Forer, AI-Generated Outputs and Unfair Competition: Examples from China and the United States
5:00 pm PDT
Dinner for In-Person Attendees
Saturday, November 7
9:00 – 9:15 am PDT
4:00 – 4:15 pm GMT
Opening Remarks
TBD, University of California, Irvine School of Law
Lateef Mtima, Professor of Law, Howard University School of Law & Founder and Director, Institute for Intellectual Property and Social Justice (IIPSJ)
9:15 – 11:00 am PDT
4:15 – 6:00 pm GMT
Panel 3: KNOWLEDGE, PEOPLE AND ORGANIZATIONAL FIELDS
Moderator: TBD, TBD
Presenters:
John R. Whitman and Metka Potočnik (with Lateef Mtima), Knowledge and Information Migration Among Organizational Fields: the Case of Arts-In-Correction
Jasmine Abdel-Khalik, The Doctrine of “Foreign” Equivalents
Edward Koellner, Knowledge Refugees: Intellectual Property, Academic Displacement, and the Right to Carry Research Across Borders
Shubha Ghosh, The Untapped Talents of Adult Learners
11:00 – 11:15 am PDT
6:00 – 6:15 pm GMT
Break
11:15 am – 12:50 pm PDT
6:15 – 7:50 pm GMT
Panel 4: KNOWLEDGE MIGRATION, INDIGENEOUS PEOPLES AND LOCAL COMMUNITIES
Moderator: TBD, TBD
Presenters:
Kara Swanson, Intellectual Property in the Kingdom of Hawai’i
Jack Lerner, TBD
Antonella Gutierrez and Maria Cristina Trujillo, When Knowledge Migrates Without Its Communities: Indigenous Cultural Appropriation, Intellectual Property, and Social Justice
Phan Ngoc Gia Bao et al., When the Community Has Moved – The GRATK Treaty’s Disclosure Rule and the Diasporic Knowledge-Holder
12:50 – 2:00 pm PDT
7:50 – 9:00 pm GMT
Lunch Break
2:00 – 3:30 pm PDT
9:00 – 10:30 pm GMT
Panel 5: Ben Liu Scholars – 2026 (ECRs)
Moderator: TBD, TBD
Presenters:
Phalguni Mahapatra, Beyond Repair: Knowledge Migration, IP Control, and Grassroots Innovation
Katherine Rock and Allison Fish, The Gender Patenting Gap and the Invisibilisation in Law of Women’s Work in Inventive Teams
Gbemisola Osadua, THE AFCFTA PROTOCOL ON INTELLECTUAL PROPERTY: LEVERAGING MULTILATERALISM FOR THE PROMOTION OF AFRICAN INNOVATION AND CREATIVITY IN THE GLOBAL ECONOMY
Saskhia Menendez, Bordering Sound: Trans Cultural Identity, Intellectual Property, and the Migration of Voice in the Global Music Industry
3:30 pm PDT
10:30 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
Jack Lerner, University of California, Irvine School of Law Dalindyebo Shabalala, Suffolk University Law School
Tuneen Chisolm, Howard University School of Law Metka Potocnik, Univ. of Wolverhampton, School of Business and Law
Betsy Rosenblatt, Case Western Reserve University Law School Kara Swanson, Northeastern University School of Law
Lateef Mtima, Howard University School of Law Jasmine Abdel-Khalik, UMKC School of Law
Kali Murray, Marquette University Law School Chinwe Ohanele Agwu
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
