Faculty Events Calendar: Colloquia, Workshops, Lectures and Conferences
Consistent with its longstanding commitment to fostering a communal environment of intellectual engagement, the Law School is pleased to host countless colloquia, conferences, and guest lectures throughout the school year. Many of these events are specially scheduled, one-time affairs. In addition, the school runs the following regularly scheduled series, which cover a range of formats and scholarly areas.
September 24, 2018
Monday
TNH 2.111 (Sheffield-Massey Room)11:30am - 1:00pm
Drawing Board Luncheon - Tom McGarity and Wendy Wagner - "Stealth Deregulation with Science"
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Thomas O. McGarity
Joe R. and Teresa Lozano Long Endowed Chair in Administrative Law
University of Texas -
Wendy E. Wagner
Richard Dale Endowed Chair in Law
University of Texas
Drawing Board Luncheon - Tom McGarity and Wendy Wagner - "Stealth Deregulation with Science"
IPST Workshop: Bhaven Sampat, “The Public Sector Role in Pharmaceutical Innovation: Measurement Issues and Policy Implications”
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Bhaven Sampat
Professor, Columbia, Public Health
Claims that the public sector is the source of a large share of important drugs abound, and help form the basis of proposals to change public sector patent laws, to intervene to lower drug costs, to regulate the drug industry more generally, and to increase public research support. In this paper, I argue that the policy discussion needs to pay better attention to the nuances in the empirical literature. Part I of this paper reviews what is known about the public sector role, and provides new updated data extending previous studies. Part II discusses conceptual and measurement issues in linking and attributing public funding to drugs. Part III considers implications for public policy, and emphasizes the importance of distinguishing between the direct and indirect public sector roles when considering changes to patent law and other innovation policies.
September 26, 2018
Wednesday
JON 6.207 (Susman Academic Center, The Judge William W. and Margaret R. Kilgarlin Chambers (6.207 / 6.208))3:45pm - 5:30pm
Law and Philosophy Workshop - Nelson Tebbe // Cornell and Lawrence Sager // UT
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Nelson Tebbe
Professor of Law, Cornell Law School -
Lawrence Sager
Alice Jane Drysdale Sheffield Regents Chair
University of Texas
The Law and Philosophy Seminar Workshop surveys different topics in legal philosophy and constitutional theory. Organized around a series of six workshops, each features a different leading scholar who presents and discusses their own work with UT law and philosophy faculty and the students in the seminar.
September 28, 2018
Friday
TNH 2.111 (Sheffield-Massey Room)2:00pm - 4:00pm
Bookfest - Lucas A. (Scot) Powe Jr.
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Lucas A. Powe Jr.
Anne Green Regents Chair in Law
Professor of Government
University of Texas -
Justin Driver
Professor, University of Chicago -
Ernie Young
Professor, Duke University
America's Lone Star Constitution: How Supreme Court Cases from Texas Shape the Nation
IPST Workshop: Barton Beebe, “Testing for Trademark Dilution in the Court and the Lab”
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Barton Beebe
Professor, NYU School of Law
Federal courts are currently split, even within particular districts, on the basic question of what a plaintiff must show to establish that a defendant’s conduct constitutes trademark dilution by blurring. Federal trademark law defines “dilution by blurring” as “association arising from the similarity between a mark or trade name and a famous mark that impairs the distinctiveness of the famous mark.” In construing this statutory language, a majority of courts have held that to establish blurring, a plaintiff need only show that consumers associate the defendant’s mark with the plaintiff’s famous mark. These courts appear to assume that to the extent that there is consumer association, this association alone will “impair the distinctiveness” of the famous mark. A minority of courts have held that the plaintiff must show both consumer association and that the consumer association “impairs the distinctiveness” of the famous mark. In this article, we make two contributions to the current debate over what must be shown to establish dilution by blurring. First, we report the results of a set of experiments that reveal that the majority approach is fundamentally deficient. These experiments demonstrate that even when consumers associate a junior mark with a famous senior mark, this association does not necessarily result in any impairment of the ability of the senior mark to identify its source and associations. For a plaintiff to prove that association leads to blurring, more must be done; we describe a method for determining when association is likely to lead to impairment. Second, we evaluate the current state of the art in trademark dilution survey methodology: response time surveys. These surveys purportedly show both consumer association and impairment. Through a set of experiments, we demonstrate that these surveys currently use the wrong control and are invalid. In light of our findings, we reflect more generally on the question of whether dilution by blurring ever occurs and on how the blurring cause of action may be reconfigured better to comport with courts’ intuitions about the true nature of the harm that the cause of action seeks to address.
October 1, 2018
Monday
JON 6.207 (Susman Academic Center, The Judge William W. and Margaret R. Kilgarlin Chambers (6.207 / 6.208))3:45pm - 5:45pm
Business Law Workshop - Edward Fox
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Edward Fox
Professor, University of Michigan
Professor Edward Fox of the University of Michigan School of Law will be the guest speaker in todays Business Law Workshop, hosted by Jens Dammann, Mira Ganor and James Spindler.
October 1, 2018
Monday
TNH 2.111 (Sheffield-Massey Room)4:00pm - 6:00pm
Rapoport Center Colloquium: Law and the Production of Inequality
Rapoport Center Colloquium: Law and the Production of Inequality
October 3, 2018
Wednesday
TNH 3.129 (Atlas Seminar Room)3:45pm - 5:30pm
Law and Economic Seminar - Manisha Padi // University of Chicago
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Manisha Padi
Professor, University of Chicago
October 3, 2018
Wednesday
JON 6.207 (Susman Academic Center, The Judge William W. and Margaret R. Kilgarlin Chambers (6.207 / 6.208))3:45pm - 5:30pm
Law and Philosophy Workshop - Dimitrios Kyritsis // Univ. of Reading School of Law
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Dimitrios Kyritsis
Associate Professor of Law, Univ. of Reading School of Law
The Law and Philosophy Seminar Workshop surveys different topics in legal philosophy and constitutional theory. Organized around a series of six workshops, each features a different leading scholar who presents and discusses their own work with UT law and philosophy faculty and the students in the seminar.
October 4, 2018
Thursday
TNH 2.111 (Sheffield-Massey Room)11:30am - 1:00pm
Faculty Colloquium - Jack Getman / Charles Bennett
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Julius G. Getman
Earl E. Sheffield Regents Chair Emeritus
University of Texas -
Charles Bennett
Professor, University of South Carolina
October 8, 2018
Monday
TNH 2.111 (Sheffield-Massey Room)11:30am - 1:00pm
Drawing Board Luncheon - Calvin Johnson
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Calvin H. Johnson
John T. Kipp Chair in Corporate and Business Law
University of Texas
Calvin Johnson
IPST Workshop: Jessica Silbey, “Against Progress: Intellectual Property and Fundamental Values in the Internet Age”
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Jessica Silbey
Professor, Northeastern
“Against Progress: Intellectual Property and Fundamental Values in the Internet Age” (book to be published by Stanford University Press, forthcoming 2020)
Abstract: This book studies intellectual property as a bellwether of changing social justice needs in the digital era. It asks questions about the relationship between technological development and socio-economic welfare by tracing through legal cases, media accounts, and over 75 face-to-face interviews varieties of popular legal consciousness and legal arguments that challenge conventional accounts of intellectual property's implications for our society and its future.
October 15, 2018
Monday
JON 6.207 (Susman Academic Center, The Judge William W. and Margaret R. Kilgarlin Chambers (6.207 / 6.208))3:45pm - 5:45pm
Business Law Seminar - Marc Steinberg
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Marc Steinberg
Professor, SMU
Professor Marc Steinberg of SMU will be the guest speaker in today's Business Law Workshop, hosted by Jens Dammann, Mira Ganor and James Spindler.
October 15, 2018
Monday
TNH 2.111 (Sheffield-Massey Room)4:00pm - 6:00pm
Rapoport Center Colloquium: Law and the Production of Inequality
Rapoport Center Colloquium: Law and the Production of Inequality
October 22, 2018
Monday
TNH 2.111 (Sheffield-Massey Room)11:30am - 1:00pm
Drawing Board Luncheon - Larry Sager
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Lawrence Sager
Alice Jane Drysdale Sheffield Regents Chair
University of Texas
Larry Sager
IPST Workshop: Jeanne Fromer, “Playful Innovation” (with Mark Lemley)
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Jeanne Fromer
Professor, NYU Law
“Playful Innovation” (with Mark Lemley) Abstract: Play matters. And it matters to innovation more than the law appreciates. Consider the way we speak about creativity. While people use terms of play to indicate creativity and early-stage innovation—“playing with” an idea or “kicking ideas around”—the use of such terms also implies that play is merely a prelude to something else that is serious and definitive (“we’re merely playing with the idea at this point”). This cramped view of play is both wrong and harmful to innovation. That is because play is integral to both life and innovation, yet patent and copyright laws do not take play seriously (enough).
October 23, 2018
Tuesday
TNH 2.111 (Sheffield-Massey Room)8:00am - 5:00pm
Cybersecurity Conference
More information to be announced
October 24, 2018
Wednesday
TNH 3.129 (Atlas Seminar Room)3:45pm - 5:30pm
October 24, 2018
Wednesday
JON 6.207 (Susman Academic Center, The Judge William W. and Margaret R. Kilgarlin Chambers (6.207 / 6.208))3:45pm - 5:30pm
Law and Philosophy Workshop - Mitchell Berman // Univ. of Pennsylvania Law School
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Mitchell Berman
Leon Meltzer Professor of Law and Professor of Philosophy, Univ. of Pennsylvania Law School
The Law and Philosophy Seminar Workshop surveys different topics in legal philosophy and constitutional theory. Organized around a series of six workshops, each features a different leading scholar who presents and discusses their own work with UT law and philosophy faculty and the students in the seminar.
October 29, 2018
Monday
JON 6.207 (Susman Academic Center, The Judge William W. and Margaret R. Kilgarlin Chambers (6.207 / 6.208))3:45pm - 5:45pm
Business Law Seminar - Davidoff Solomon
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Davidoff Solomon
Berkeley
Professor Davidoff Solomon of Berkeley Law will be the guest speaker in today's Business Law Workshop, hosted by Jens Dammann, Mira Ganor and James Spindler.
October 29, 2018
Monday
TNH 2.111 (Sheffield-Massey Room)4:00pm - 6:00pm
Rapoport Center Colloquium: Law and the Production of Inequality
Rapoport Center Colloquium: Law and the Production of Inequality
November 5, 2018
Monday
TNH 2.111 (Sheffield-Massey Room)11:30am - 1:00pm
Drawing Board Luncheon - John Golden
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John M. Golden
Loomer Family Professor in Law
University of Texas
John Golden
IPST Workshop: Paul Ohm, “The Many Revolutions of Carpenter”
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Paul Ohm
Professor, Georgetown
Abstract: The Supreme Court’s opinion in Carpenter v. United States has been heralded by many as an important victory for the privacy of individuals against government surveillance in our rapidly changing technological age. Despite this, scholars and commentators have surprisingly underappreciated many of the important impacts of this landmark opinion. Carpenter works many small revolutions in Fourth Amendment law, in ways are likely to guide the evolution of privacy in this country for a generation or more.
Law and Philosophy Workshop - Seana Shiffrin // UCLA
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Seana Shiffrin
Pete Kameron Professor of Law and Social Justice, UCLA: School of Law and Dept. of Philosophy
The Law and Philosophy Seminar Workshop surveys different topics in legal philosophy and constitutional theory. Organized around a series of six workshops, each features a different leading scholar who presents and discusses their own work with UT law and philosophy faculty and the students in the seminar.
November 8, 2018
Thursday
TNH 2.111 (Sheffield-Massey Room)11:30am - 1:00pm
Faculty Colloquium - Paul Mahoney // University of Virginia
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Paul Mahoney
Professor, University of Virginia
IPST Workshop: Rachel Sachs, “Regulating Intermediate Technologies”
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Rachel Sachs
Associate Professor of Law, Washington University Law
Abstract: Over the last several years, scholars studying health innovation policy have carefully considered the ways in which administrative agencies do and should regulate different types of technologies to encourage their development and dissemination. Scholars have examined a range of legal incentives, including patents, Food and Drug Administration (FDA) exclusivity periods, taxes, grants, health insurance reimbursement, and other tools to promote socially valuable innovations that our current system has structurally disfavored. This research has considered broad categories of technologies, including drugs, devices, and diagnostics.
November 12, 2018
Monday
TNH 2.111 (Sheffield-Massey Room)4:00pm - 6:00pm
Rapoport Center Colloquium: Law and the Production of Inequality
Rapoport Center Colloquium: Law and the Production of Inequality
November 14, 2018
Wednesday
TNH 3.129 (Atlas Seminar Room)3:45pm - 5:30pm
Law and Economic Seminar - Murat Mungan // George Mason University
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Murat Mungan
Professor, George Mason University
November 15, 2018
Thursday
TNH 2.111 (Sheffield-Massey Room)11:30am - 1:00pm
Faculty Colloquium - David Spence
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David B. Spence
Baker Botts Chair in Law
Professor of Business, Government and Society
University of Texas
November 19, 2018
Monday
3:45pm - 5:45pmBusiness Law Seminar - Saule Omarova
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Saule Omarova
Cornell
Professor Saule Omarova of Cornell Law School will be the guest speaker in todays Business Law Workshop, hosted by Jens Dammann, Mira Ganor and James Spindler.
IPST Workshop: Paul Gugliuzza, “The Supreme Court at the Bar of Patents”
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Paul Gugliuzza
Associate Professor of Law, Boston University School of Law
Over the past two decades, a few dozen lawyers have come to dominate practice before the U.S. Supreme Court. By many accounts, these elite lawyers—whose clients are often among the largest corporations in the world—have spurred the Court to hear more cases that businesses care about and to decide those cases in favor of their clients. The Supreme Court’s recent case law on antitrust, arbitration, punitive damages, class actions, and more provides copious examples.
November 26, 2018
Monday
TNH 2.111 (Sheffield-Massey Room)11:30am - 1:00pm
Drawing Board Luncheon - Lynn Baker
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Lynn A. Baker
Frederick M. Baron Chair in Law
Co-Director - Center on Lawyers, Civil Justice and the Media
University of Texas
Lynn Baker
November 26, 2018
Monday
TNH 2.111 (Sheffield-Massey Room)4:00pm - 6:00pm
Rapoport Center Colloquium: Law and the Production of Inequality
Rapoport Center Colloquium: Law and the Production of Inequality
November 28, 2018
Wednesday
TNH 3.129 (Atlas Seminar Room)3:45pm - 5:30pm
Law and Economic Seminar - Leyla Karakas // Syracuse University
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Leyla Karakas
Professor, Syracuse University
November 29, 2018
Thursday
TNH 2.111 (Sheffield-Massey Room)11:30am - 1:00pm
December 1, 2018
Saturday
JON 6.207 (Susman Academic Center, The Judge William W. and Margaret R. Kilgarlin Chambers (6.207 / 6.208))3:45pm - 5:45pm
Business Law Workshop - Kent Greenfield
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Kent Greenfield
Boston College
Professor Kent Greenfield of Boston College Law School will be the guest speaker in today's Business Law Workshop, hosted by Jens Dammann, Mira Ganor and James Spindler.
IPST Workshop: Kristelia Garcia, “Reconceptualizing Copyright’s Term”
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Kristelia Garcia
Associate Professor of Law
The debate over the optimal duration of copyright has occupied legislators, creators, industry leaders, and scholars for decades. The last legislative effort to address copyright’s term—the Copyright Term Extension Act of 1998, popularly known as the “Sonny Bono Act”—extended the period of protection to life of the author plus 70 years (or, in the case of works made for hire, to 95 years from the date of distribution, or 120 years from the date of creation, whichever comes first). While many copyright owners have cheered this development—which brought the U.S. into harmony with some of its foreign counterparts under the Berne Convention—critics have lamented the potential for waste, inefficiency, and overreach that this extended term brings. Notably, most of the arguments for and against a lengthy copyright term are impressionistic. To date, largely due to lack of data, there has been little robust empirical analysis of copyright’s usefulness over time.
Utilizing music industry sales data not previously available for academic analysis, this Article fills an evidentiary gap in the literature. Using recorded music as a case study, we determine that most copyrighted music earns the majority of its lifetime revenue in the first [5-10 years] following its initial release. We thus establish an important empirical baseline for future policy discussion: in the case of information goods such as music, the societal cost of strong copyright protection beyond the point of commercial viability may outweigh the benefit to both creators and consumers as the marginal return on this protection decreases sharply. This overprotection is socially wasteful and does little to incentivize creation or to improve access to content. The empirical argument against a lengthy term of strong copyright protection may well extend beyond music to other information goods such as books, film, and television.
Our analysis contributes to the normative debate around copyright’s incentive-access paradigm by proposing a more efficient conception of copyright’s term: one that replaces the conventional “life plus” durational standard with one based on the commercial viability of the [average?] work.
Biography: In addition to teaching copyright, trademark, and property, Professor García serves as Director of the Content Initiative at the Silicon Flatirons Center for Law, Technology, and Entrepreneurship, where she hosts an annual content conference. Her research is focused on the intersection of law, technology, and economics, with a particular focus on efficiency, competition, private ordering, and distributive justice. Her work has been published in the California Law Review and the New York University Law Review, among others.
Prior to joining Colorado Law, Professor García was a visiting associate professor and the Frank H. Marks Fellow in Intellectual Property at the George Washington University Law School in Washington, DC. She is also an affiliated fellow at the Information Society Project at Yale Law School. As a practicing lawyer, Professor García worked in the music industry in Los Angeles; first at Quinn Emanuel as outside counsel to Napster, then as Director of Business Development in charge of content licensing at MySpace Music, and most recently in digital strategy as Director at Universal Music Group. Prior to her work in music, she was an associate at Wachtell, Lipton, Rosen & Katz in New Yor
December 5, 2018
Wednesday
TNH 3.129 (Atlas Seminar Room)3:45pm - 5:30pm
Law and Economic Seminar - Florencia Marotta-Wurgler // NYU
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Florencia Marotta-Wurgler
Professor, NYU
December 6, 2018
Thursday
TNH 2.111 (Sheffield-Massey Room)11:30am - 1:00pm
December 10, 2018
Monday
TNH 2.111 (Sheffield-Massey Room)11:30am - 1:00pm
Drawing Board Luncheon - Oren Bracha
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Oren Bracha
William C. Conner Chair in Law
University of Texas
Oren Bracha
January 24, 2019
Thursday
TNH 2.111 (Sheffield-Massey Room)11:30am - 1:00pm
January 31, 2019
Thursday
TNH 2.111 (Sheffield-Massey Room)11:30am - 1:00pm
Faculty Colloquium - Lisa Heinzerling // Georgetown Unviersity
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Lisa Heinzerling
Professor, Georgetown University
February 7, 2019
Thursday
TNH 2.111 (Sheffield-Massey Room)11:30am - 1:00pm
Faculty Colloquium - Douglas NeJaime // Yale Law School
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Douglas NeJaime
Professor, Yale Law
February 14, 2019
Thursday
TNH 2.111 (Sheffield-Massey Room)11:30am - 1:00pm
February 21, 2019
Thursday
TNH 2.111 (Sheffield-Massey Room)11:30am - 1:00pm
Faculty Colloquium - Liz Sepper // Washington University
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Liz Sepper
Professor, Washington University
February 28, 2019
Thursday
TNH 2.111 (Sheffield-Massey Room)11:30am - 1:00pm
Faculty Colloquium - Susanna Blumenthal // Princeton University
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Susanna Blumenthal
Professor, University of Minnesota
March 28, 2019
Thursday
TNH 2.111 (Sheffield-Massey Room)11:30am - 1:00pm
April 25, 2019
Thursday
TNH 2.111 (Sheffield-Massey Room)11:30am - 1:00pm
Faculty Colloquium - Christina Rodriguez // Yale Law
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Christina Rodriguez
Professor, Yale Law
Faculty Colloquium - David Engstrom // Stanford Law
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David Engstrom
Professor, Stanford Law School