Philosophy and Intellectual Property Conference
London, UK
29-30 May, 2009
Programme | Organisation and Sponsorship | Contact
The Philosophy and Intellectual Property Conference brought together an internationally renowned group of philosophers and legal theorists. It was motivated by the difficulty of determining whether intellectual property, as currently conceived, has any philosophical or legal coherence that distinguishes it from other forms of property, or other rights that people might have in their bodies, ideas and in the world. Intellectual property rights give their holders considerable powers to withhold life-saving inventions and medicines, to prevent the dissemination and sharing of books, music and art work and to charge fees for licensing and use that only the wealthiest individuals and governments are able to pay. Therefore the aim of the conference was to promote dialogue between lawyers and philosophers over the solution to shared conceptual and normative problems in the treatment of intellectual property.
The conference was a great success and I hope to be able to organise a successor in the near future. Although it did not shed as much light on the relationship of intellectual to other forms of property as initially hoped, it has led to an edited collection of papers for Cambridge University Press which help to focus philosophical and legal disagreement about the nature and strength of people's rights as the users and producers of ideas. On the one hand, we have increasingly developed and sophisticated consequentialist approaches to intellectual property. On the other hand, we have both rights-based and duty-based versions of deontological perspectives. These different perspectives were reflected in sharply contrasting attitudes to the claims of creators and authors to control their ideas, and to profit from that control; and contrasting attitudes to the morality of free-riding in general, and on intellectual property in particular. The introduction to the essays collection therefore provides an overview of the results of the conference, as manifested in the published essays, and suggests ways in which debates in political philosophy might help us to make further progress in thinking about this fascinating and important area.
Programme
FRIDAY - 29 MAY 2009
INTRODUCTORY REMARKS
09:45 - 11:15 PANEL 1
Autonomy, Social Selves, and Intellectual Property Claims
Chair: John O'Neill - Department of Philosophy, University of Manchester, UK
Presenter: John Christman - Department of Philosophy, Pennsylvania State University, USA
Commentator: Abraham Drassinower - Faculty of Law, University of Toronto, Canada
11:45 - 13:15 PANEL 2
Patents and the Human Genome
Chair: Muireann Quigley - Institute for Science, Ethics, and Education, School of Law, University of Manchester, UK
Presenter: Leif Wenar - School of Law, King's College, UK
Commentator: Annabelle Lever - Department of Philosophy, London School of Economics, UK
14:15 - 15:45 PANEL 3
A Corrective Justice Argument for Intellectual Property Rights in Traditional Knowledge
Chair: Tim Roberts - The Chartered Institute of Patent Attorneys, UK
Presenter: Stephen R. Munzer - School of Law, UCLA, USA
Commentator: Graham Dutfield - School of Law, University of Leeds, UK
16:15 - 17:45 PANEL 4
Copyright and the Public Sphere
Chair: Wendy J. Gordon - School of Law, Boston University, and School of Law, Fordham University, NY, USA
Presenter: Anne Barron - Department of Law, London School of Economics, UK
Commentator: Laura Biron - Department of Philosophy, University of Cambridge, UK
SATURDAY - 30 MAY 2009
09:00 - 10:30 PANEL 5
Is P2P Sharing of MP3 Files an Objectionable Form of Free-Riding? (paper)
Chair: Otilia Miclosina - Western University of Timisoara, Romania
Presenter: Geert Demuijnck - Edhec Business School, Lille, France
Commentator: David Lametti - Faculty of Law, McGill University, Montreal, Canada
11:00 - 12:30 PANEL 6
What's Wrong With Plagiarism?
Chair: Dev Gangjee - Department of Law, London School of Economics, UK
Presenter: Alex Oliver - Faculty of Philosophy, University of Cambridge, UK
Commentator: Harry Lesser - Department of Philosophy, University of Manchester, UK
13:30 - 14:45 PANEL 7
On the Value of the Intellectual Commons
Chair: Lionel Bently - Faculty of Law, University of Cambridge, UK
Presenter: James Wilson - Comprehensive Biomedical Research Centre and Centre for Philosophy Justice
and Health, University College London, UK
Commentator: Christopher Wadlow - Department of Law, University of East Anglia
15:15 - 16:45 PANEL 8
Is There a Human Right to Pharmaceuticals? The Global Commons, the Intellectual Commons, and the Possibility of Private Intellectual Property
Chair: Kathleen Liddell - Centre for Intellectual Property & Information Law and Faculty of Law, University
of Cambridge, UK
Presenter: Mathias Risse - John F. Kennedy School of Government, Harvard University, Cambridge, MA, USA
Commentator: Axel Gosseries Ramalho - Faculté des Sciences Économiques, Sociales et Politiques,
Université Catholique de Louvain, Belgium
17:15 - 18:45 PANEL 9
Do We Really Need IP Rights? Considerations from Political Philosophy, Political Economy and Technological Change
Chair: Jonathan Wolff - Department of Philosophy, University College London, UK
Presenter: Alex Rosenberg - Department of Philosophy, Duke University, USA
Commentator: Maurizio Borghi - Law School, Brunel University, London, UK
Other Participants
Jason Alexander - Department of Philosophy, London School of Economics, UK
Hanan Almawla - Queen Mary, University of London, UK
Sabine Schulz Blank
Romulus Brancoveanu - Faculty of Philosophy, University of Bucharest, Romania
Keren Bright - Centre for Law, The Open University, Milton Keynes, UK
Sarah Chan - Institute for Science, Ethics and Innovation, School of Law, University of Manchester, UK
Ashok Chakravarty - European Patent Office, Munich, Germany
Ronan Deazley - Birmingham Law School, The University of Birmingham, UK
Niels van Dijk - Law, Science, Technology and Society Studies, Vrije Universiteit Brussel, Belgium
Catherine Dodirina - Institute of Air and Space Law, McGill University, Montreal, Canada
Hilary Gaskin - Cambridge University Press, UK
Gerry Gavigan - The Open Source Consortium, UK
Amy Gibson - EMI Group Ltd, London, UK
Wendy J. Gordon - School of Law, Boston University, and School of Law, Fordham University, NY, USA
Palmira Granados Moreno - Faculty of Law, McGill University, Montreal, Canada
Greg Hagen - Faculty of Law, University of Calgary, Canada
Rachelle Harris - Strategic Advisory Board for Intellectual Property Policy, London, UK
Rodrigo Eduardo Ramirez Herrera - Faculty of Law, University of Alicante, Spain
Felicity Hide - Boult Wade Tennant, London, UK
Brigitte Hilmer - Institut für Philosophie, Universität Potsdam, Germany and Philosophisches Seminar,
Universität Basel, Switzerland
Dan Hunter - New York Law School and The Wharton School, University of Pennsylvania, USA
Belinda Isaac - Isaac & Co. Ltd, UK
Mandana Jenabzadeh - Sony Computer Entertainment Europe Ltd., London, UK
Sotiria Kechagia - School of Law, Queen Mary, University of London, UK
Aono Kensaku - Sophia University, Japan and Katholieke Universiteit Leuven, Belgium
Nicole van der Laan - Munich Intellectual Property Law Center, Munich, Germany
Malcolm Langley - Intellectual Property Archive, Queen Mary Intellectual Property Research Institute,
London, UK
Barbara Lauriat - St. Catherine's College, Oxford University, UK
Christopher Lever - Durham Law School, University of Durham, UK
David Lewisohn - Entertainment Law Review, UK
Margaret Llewelyn - School of Law, The University of Sheffield, UK
Alain Marciano - Université de Reims Champagne Ardenne, France
Natasha McCarthy - The Royal Academy of Engineering, London, UK
Masood Ahmed Ali Mir - Advocate at the High Court, Mir & Associates, Rawalpindi, Pakistan
Heesob Nam - New Malden, Surrey, UK
Akalemwa Ngenda - Brunel Law School, Brunel University, UK
Martin O'Neill - Manchester Centre for Political Theory, University of Manchester, UK
Lauren Osborne - Queen Mary, University of London, UK
Anna Ostanina - Department of Law (LLM), London School of Economics and Political Science, London, UK
David Papineau - Department of Philosophy, King's College, University of London, UK
Chris Peacock - Faculty of Medicine, Imperial College, London, UK
Frances Pinter - Centre for Global Governance, London School of Economics, and Bloomsbury Academic, London, UK
Timothy Pinto - Taylor Wessing LLP, London, UK
Julia Powles - Faculty of Law, University of Oxford, UK
Peter Rands - Teva UK Ltd, UK
Heba Raslan - King's College, London, UK
Patrick Reilly - Intellectual Property Society, USA
Andrew Rens - Shuttleworth Foundation, Cape Town, South Africa
Ken Shadlen - Development Studies Institute, London School of Economics, UK
Amr Shoukry - Brunel Law School, University of Brunel, UK
Hillel Steiner - School of Social Sciences, University of Manchester, UK
Julius Stobbs - Boult Wade Tennant, Cambridge, UK
Teresa Swieckowska - Institute of Information and Book Studies, University of Warsaw, Poland
Nigel Warburton - Department of Philosophy, Open University, Milton keynes, UK
John Williams - ip21 Ltd, London, UK
Jessica Wolff - Boult Wade Tennant, London, UK
Nan Zhang - Queen Mary Intellectual Property Research Institute, Queen Mary, University of London, UK
Organisation and Sponsorship
The conference was organised by Annabelle Lever from the Department of Philosophy at the London School of Economics and was hosted by the Institute of Philosophy, School of Advanced Study (SAS), University of London.
Generous support and sponsorship for the organisation of the conference was provided by
The Department of Philosophy, Logic and Scientific Method at the London School of Economics and Political Science (LSE)
The Institute of Philosophy of the School of Advanced Study (SAS), University of London
Contact
For any enquiries regarding this conference please contact
Prof. Annabelle Lever
Programme Chair
Université de Genève
Département de science politique
et relations internationales
40 Boulevard du Pont d'Arve
CH-1205 Genève 4
Switzerland
T: +41 22 379 83 61
F: +41 22 379 83 64
E: annabelle.lever@unige.ch
Last modified: 13 June, 2013