2021-2022 Symposium
The theme of Michigan State Law Review’s 2021-2022 Symposium is The Evolving Realm of Soft IP: Copyrights, Trademarks, Trade Secrets, and Publicity Rights. Copyrights, trademarks, trade secrets, and publicity rights influence every category of intellectual property law. The public’s perception of intellectual property is rapidly evolving and the law is trailing behind. There is much discussion to be had and work to be done on this important topic. Our Symposium invited top scholars to publish and present pieces related to the theme of soft intellectual property ownership in the realm of copyrights, trademarks, trade dress, and publicity rights and is co-sponsored by Professor David Blankfein-Tabachnick.
Current Symposium Scholars
Richard A. Epstein is the inaugural Laurence A. Tisch Professor of Law at NYU School of Law. Prior to his joining the faculty, he was a visiting law professor at NYU from 2007 through 2009. He has served as the Peter and Kirstin Bedford Senior Fellow at the Hoover Institution since 2000. Epstein is also the James Parker Hall Distinguished Service Professor of Law Emeritus and a senior lecturer at the University of Chicago. His initial law school appointment was at the University of Southern California from 1968 to 1972. Epstein received an LL.D., h.c. from the University of Ghent, 2003. He has been a member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences since 1985 and has been a Senior Fellow of the Center for Clinical Medical Ethics at the University of Chicago Division of Biological Sciences, also since 1983. He served as editor of the Journal of Legal Studies from 1981 to 1991, and of the Journal of Law and Economics from 1991-2001. From 2001 to 2010 he was a director of the John M. Olin Program in Law and Economics at the University of Chicago.
His newest book, The Dubious Morality of the Modern Administrative State is forthcoming from the Manhattan Institute in November 2019. His most recently published book, The Classical Liberal Constitution: The Uncertain Quest for Limited Government (Harvard 2014) is available for purchase here. His previous books include Design for Liberty: Private Property, Public Administration and the Rule of Law (Harvard 2011); The Case Against the Employee Free Choice Act (Hoover 2009); Supreme Neglect: How to Revive the Constitutional Protection of Property Rights (Oxford 2008); Antitrust Decrees in Theory and Practice: Why Less is More (AEI 2007); Overdose: How Excessive Government Regulation Stifles Pharmaceutical Innovation (Yale University Press. 2006); How Progressives Rewrote the Constitution (Cato 2006); Cases and Materials on Torts (Aspen Law & Business; 8th ed. 2004); Skepticism and Freedom: A Modern Case for Classical Liberalism (University of Chicago, 2003); Torts (Aspen Law & Business 1999); Principles for a Free Society: Reconciling Individual Liberty with the Common Good (Perseus Books, 1998): Mortal Peril: Our Inalienable Rights to Health Care (Addison-Wesley, 1997); Simple Rules for a Complex World (Harvard, 1995); Bargaining With the State (Princeton, 1993); Forbidden Grounds: The Case Against Employment Discrimination Laws (Harvard , 1992); Takings: Private Property and the Power of Eminent Domain (Harvard, 1985); and Modern Products Liability Law (Greenwood Press, 1980). He has also edited(with Catherine M. Sharkey) Cases and Materials on the Law of Torts (10th edition 2012).
Professor Epstein has written numerous articles on a wide range of legal and interdisciplinary subjects. He has taught courses in administrative law, antitrust law, civil procedure, communications, constitutional law, contracts, corporations, criminal law, employment discrimination law, environmental law, food and drug law health law and policy, legal history, labor law, property, real estate development and finance, jurisprudence, labor law; land use planning, patents, individual, estate and corporate taxation, Roman Law; torts, and workers' compensation.
Professor Epstein also writes a legal column, the Libertarian, found here, and is a contributor to Ricochet.com and the SCOTUSblog.
Alfred C. Yen is a Professor of Law and Dean's Distinguished Scholar at Boston College Law School. He recently served as Associate Dean of Faculty. He is a nationally known scholar who has published numerous articles about copyright law, the Internet, sports law, Asian-American legal issues, and law teaching. He is also the author of (with Professor Joseph Liu) Copyright: Essential Cases and Materials, which was published by West Publishing in 2008 and will soon be in its fourth edition.
Professor Yen has also held many positions of leadership within legal education. He has served as Chair of the AALS Professional Development Committee and completed a term on the Board of Editors for the Journal of Legal Education and the Board of Governors for the Society of American Law Teachers. In 2001, the American Law Institute elected him to membership. Additionally, Professor Yen has served as chair of the Association of American Law Schools Section on Art Law and its Section on Minority Group. He is presently the chair of the Section on Sports Law, and he organized the first, fifth, and tenth Conference of Asian Pacific American Law Faculty, all of which were held at Boston College Law School.
In 2020, Professor Yen became Editor-in-Chief of the Journal of the Copyright Society, a leading peer reviewed journal in that field. He also presently holds appointments as an Invited Professor at the Universite Paris 1 Pantheon-Sorbonne Law School and a Visiting Scholar at the University of Arizona Law School.
Jennifer Carter-Johnson is the Associate Dean for Academic Affairs and Associate Professor of Law at Michigan State University College of Law. Professor Carter-Johnson focuses her interests on intellectual property law and policy. She combines her scientific and legal training to investigate issues at the intersection of biological research and the law.
Prior to joining the Michigan State University College of Law, Professor Carter-Johnson was a visiting faculty fellow at Washington University School of Law in St. Louis, Missouri, from 2008 until the fall 2010. Prior to that, she practiced law in Seattle, Washington, specializing in intellectual property licensing and representation of biotechnology companies.
Professor Carter-Johnson graduated with highest honors from Union University with a B.S. in mathematics and biology. She then received her law degree with honors from the University of Michigan Law School, where she was an articles editor and symposium coordinator of the Michigan Law Review. She earned her Ph.D. in microbiology from the University of Virginia, where her research concentrated on immune system development.
A member of the Washington State Bar, she is registered to practice before the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office. Carter-Johnson's publications include "The Shifting Landscape of Patent Licensing," BioPharm International (2007); "Lack of the Trosine Phosphatase SHP-1 Causes an Enrichment of CD4+CD25+ Regulatory T Cells," The Journal of Immunology (2005); "Cutting Edge: Dependence of TCR Antagonism on Src Homology 2 Domain-containing Protein Tyrosine Phosphatase Activity," The Journal of Immunology (2003); and "The Tyrosine Phosphatase SHP-1 Influences Thymocyte Development by Setting TCR Signaling Thresholds," International Immunology (1999).
Sean A. Pager is Professor of Law and Associate Director of the Intellectual Property, Information, Communications Law program at Michigan State University College of Law. Prior to joining the Law College faculty, Professor Pager taught as a visiting professor at University of Richmond, Seattle University, and Indiana University-Bloomington.
Professor Pager’s scholarship explores ways in which intellectual property regimes affect development and cultural identities. Much of his recent work has focused on creative industries. He has a particular interest in legal capacity building issues related to “Creative Upstarts,” a rubric that embraces both indie filmmakers and musicians in the U.S. as well as emerging content industries in the developing world. Professor Pager has also written on traditional knowledge and cultural heritage rights and has a longstanding interest in geographical indications.
While at U.C. Berkeley, Professor Pager served as associate editor on the California Law Review. Following law school, he practiced as a litigation associate at Howard Rice in San Francisco and clerked for the Honorable Judge James Browning on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit. Prior to entering academia, Professor Pager earned an LL.M. in International Law from the European University Institute in Florence, Italy, while studying on a Fulbright Fellowship.
Professor Pager is a member of the Academic Advisory Board of the Copyright Alliance and the Association of Teachers and Researchers in Intellectual Property Law. He is admitted to the California bar.
Amy Adler is the Emily Kempin Professor of Law at New York University School of Law, where she teaches Art Law, First Amendment Law, and Feminist Jurisprudence. The Law School awarded her its Podell Distinguished Teaching Award in 2015. Adler’s recent scholarship addresses an array of issues such as the First Amendment treatment of visual images, the misfit between copyright law and the art market, the legal regulation of pornography, and the moral rights of artists. A leading expert on the intersection of art and law, Adler has lectured about these topics to a wide variety of audiences, from attorneys general to museum curators to the FBI. Adler graduated from the Yale Law School, where she was a senior editor of the Yale Law Journal. She graduated summa cum laude from Yale University, where she was elected to Phi Beta Kappa and where she received the Marshall Allison Prize in the arts and letters. Adler clerked for Judge John M. Walker Jr. of the US Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit and worked as an associate at Debevoise & Plimpton before joining the NYU Law faculty.
Christopher Jon Sprigman came to NYU School of Law in 2013 from the University of Virginia School of Law. Sprigman teaches intellectual property law, antitrust law, torts, and comparative constitutional law. His research focuses on how legal rules affect innovation and the deployment of new technologies. He is the co-author of a free copyright textbook, Copyright Law: Cases and Materials (2019, with Jeanne Fromer), and The Knockoff Economy: How Imitation Sparks Innovation (2012, with Kal Raustiala). He has also authored and co-authored numerous articles in law reviews and other scholarly publications.
Sprigman’s widely cited works have had an influence on important aspects of copyright and trademark law, and often belie the conventional wisdom about intellectual property rights. He was an appellate counsel from 1999 to 2001 in the Antitrust Division of the US Department of Justice, where US v. Microsoft was among his cases, and later was elected partner in the Washington, DC, office of King & Spalding before becoming a residential fellow at Stanford Law School’s Center for Internet and Society.
Sprigman received his BA in history magna cum laude from the University of Pennsylvania in 1988, and a JD with honors from the University of Chicago Law School in 1993. He subsequently clerked for Judge Stephen Reinhardt of the US Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit and Justice Lourens H. W. Ackermann of the Constitutional Court of South Africa. In 2015, the American Law Institute named him Reporter for the Restatement of Copyright.
Ben Brady is a fellow at the American Law Institute in Philadelphia. Before joining ALI, he worked as a law clerk for Judge Raymond Gruender of the Eighth Circuit Court of Appeals in St. Louis, and as an attorney-adviser at the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission in Washington, DC. Originally from Arkansas, he received a Ph.D. in History from the University of Virginia, a J.D. from Stanford Law School, and an A.B. in History from Princeton.
Roy Germano is a senior research scholar at the New York University School of Law and a research associate at the Federal Judicial Center. His research has appeared in The University of Chicago Law Review, the NYU Law Review, the William and Mary Bill of Rights Journal, Perspectives on Politics, Electoral Studies, and other scholarly publications. He is also the author of Outsourcing Welfare (Oxford University Press). Germano received a B.A. in political science summa cum laude from Indiana University, an M.A. from the University of Chicago, and a Ph.D. in government from the University of Texas at Austin.