American University Washington College of Law (WCL) will host the first annual Global Congress on Public Interest Intellectual Property Aug. 25-27, 2011. The Global Congress will be co-hosted by WCLs Program on Information Justice and Intellectual Property, Fundação Getulio Vargass Center for Technology and Society (Brazil), the American Assembly at Columbia University, the International Centre for Trade and Sustainable Development (Geneva), and the Institute for Global and International Studies at George Washington University.
he Global Congress on Public Interest Intellectual Property is being created as an alternative forum to the annual industry-organized Global Congress Against Counterfeiting and Piracy, which was one of the main incubators for the Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement (ACTA) and other components of the ongoing enforcement agenda in international intellectual property law. The enforcement agenda has come under increasing scrutiny from public interest advocates and independent researchers, including through the recently released Media Piracy in Emerging Economies report. Taking these research and advocacy interventions as a starting point, the Global Congress on Public Interest Intellectual Property will serve as a site for the sharing of research, ideas and policy proposals for how international intellectual property law should be constructed to better protect the full range of global public interest concerns.
Paper and presentation proposals are due by April 15, 2011. Update (March 29): the form for submitting proposals will be up by April 15. This is not a submission deadline. mw
