CopyrightX: Lessons from Networked Legal Education – A Discussion with Professor William Fisher
The Third Annual Peter Jaszi Distinguished Lecture on Intellectual Property
October 30, 2014 | Room 603 | 6:15 Lecture, 7:30 Reception
American University Washington College of Law
Live Webcast
Abstract:
Professor Fisher will discuss his experiences in designing and teaching CopyrightX, a unique course that combines a traditional law school course with affiliated courses in other countries and an online course open to the public to provide instruction about copyright systems around the world. As used in the course, the term “copyright system” encompasses three levels of material: theory (the arguments, drawn primarily from economics, political theory, and philosophy, concerning why and how the law should regulate uses of expressive materials); doctrine (the rules currently in force concerning uses of expressive materials and the ways in which those rules are typically interpreted and applied); and practice (how those rules affect various fields of art, industry, and culture–literature, music, film, photography, journalism, software design, architecture, fashion, comedy, games, and so forth).
Bio: Professor Fisher received his undergraduate degree (in American Studies) from Amherst College and his graduate degrees (J.D. and Ph.D. in the History of American Civilization) from Harvard University. Between 1982 and 1984, he served as a law clerk to Judge Harry T. Edwards of the United States Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit and then to Justice Thurgood Marshall of the United States Supreme Court. Since 1984, he has taught at Harvard Law School, where he is currently the Wilmer Hale Professor of Intellectual Property Law and a director of the Berkman Center for Internet and Society. His academic honors include a Danforth Postbaccalaureate Fellowship (1978-1982) and a Postdoctoral Fellowship at the Center for Advanced Study in the Behavioral Sciences in Stanford, California (1992-1993).
PIJIP’s Distinguished Lecture on Intellectual Property Law is named in recognition of the extraordinary contributions of Professor Peter Jaszi to the study of intellectual property at WCL and in the world at large, and in particular for his lasting contributions to the elevation of the public interest in intellectual property discourse.
