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Call for Papers: Intellectual Property and Federal Policy: Universal Access in the Digital Environment – Washington DC

On April 5, 2013, the American University Washington College of Law will host the Inaugural Cherry Blossom Symposium on Intellectual Property and Federal Policy: Universal Access in the Digital Environment. The symposium will explore intersections between intellectual property and Federal disability rights policy.

The symposium will take as a starting point the tensions between Federal intellectual property laws, which promote exclusion as a means of fostering creation and innovation, and disability rights law and policy, which promote universal access and social inclusion. The intersection of intellectual property laws and disability rights legislation and policy is occurring increasingly – including in policy discussions and litigation over access to e-readers for people with visual impairments, over access to closed captioning for media content for people who are deaf or hard of hearing, over access to web content for people with cognitive disabilities and over strategies for promoting innovation in technologies and services that promote access more generally for people with disabilities.

Deadline: January 31, 2013. Abstracts should be submitted here or emailed to  or email sflynn[@]wcl.american.edu.

The 2013 Cherry Blossom Symposium is being sponsored by WCL’s Program on Information Justice and Intellectual Property, Disability Rights Law Clinic, and the Center for Human Rights and Humanitarian Law. im