Machines of Law and Intellectual Property as Legal Machinery

The 13^th Annual Workshop of the International Society for the History and Theory of Intellectual Property (ISHTIP) will be hosted by Center for Intellectual Property at the Department of Law, University of Gothenburg, Sweden.

Time:
Conference begins 20 June at 1pm and ends 22 June 2pm (CET). Full programme will be released 15 May

Venue:
SEB Hall & Zoom

Address:
School of Business, Economics and Law
Vasagatan 1
405 30 Gothenburg
Sweden

The workshop will have a hybrid form, meaning we will cater for both physical and online participation.

We are going to be exploring themes connected to machines in and of law, specifically how law in general, and intellectual property law in particular, can be, and are, affected by machines and by machinic agencies. Machines and machinery resonate across the IP spectrum and across disciplines, from early modern innovations to the contemporary challenges of artificial intelligence. We have invited papers that explore historical and contemporary connotations that encourage disciplinary self-reflexivity and conversations. Interdisciplinary have been strongly encouraged, particularly with respect to:

• legal subjecthood e.g. technologically augmented human beings as well as non-human, less-than-human and more-than-human agencies;
• materialities e.g. legal classification, administration, properties;
• practices e.g. creative and scientific, information management, knowledge circulation, sharing; and
• conceptions of rights and domain e.g. IP Constitutionalism, private power etc.
• We invite participants to discuss how machines have influenced and challenged regulation over time. It could both be a matter of exploring contemporary challenges to law, speculative or artistic approaches or responses to machine regulation, as well as historical and theoretical discussions on the broad theme of law and machines.

The workshop will focus on:

• creation: e.g. automatic cultural production and invention
• immaterial labour: e.g. immaterial machinic production, decision making and creativity
• agency: e.g. machinic rights, responsibility and sustainability, artificial intelligence
• jurisdiction: e.g. decentralisation, territoriality, smart or technologically intensified spaces
• law as machine: e.g. systemic boundaries, ontologies of IP law, convergences of public and private regulation
• social engineering in the service of IP objectives: e.g. public goals and constitutionalism, dehumanisation of decision-making, trolls, bots, etc.

Welcome!

Workshop Organising Committee: Merima Bruncevic; Matilda Arvidsson; Frantzeska Papadopoulou; Eva Hemmungs Wirtén; Kathy Bowrey; Gabriel Galvez-Behar; Fiona Macmillan; Isabella Alexander; Maurizio Borghi.

Programme

13:00-13:15
Welcome, Organisers.

13:15-14:00
Devaluing Trademarks in an AI Driven Marketplace, Christine Haight Farley.
Commentator: Marc Stuhldreier.
Chair: Matilda Arvidsson.

Break

14:15-15:00
Human Labour and AI Creativity: Beyond the Author/Tool Dichotomy, Kristofer Erickson.
Commentator: Ulf Petrusson.
Chair: Véronique Pouillard.

Break

15:15-16:45
Technologies of Peace: Enemy Patents, Custodial Functions, and the Interwar Construction of Security, Anna Saunders.

UNESCO on the Stage: UNESCO and Algerian Performers Approaching the Rome Convention, Minja Mitrovic.

Chair: Shane Burke.

16:45-17:45 Mingle event.

Day 2

9:15-10:00
Artefactual history of copyright’s subject matter, Ewa Laskowska-Litak.
Commentator: Kathy Bowrey.
Chair: Martin Fredriksson.

Break

10:15-11:00

Hovering between institutions: Negotiating bureaucracies and the harmonization of intellectual property in a European context, Marius Buning.
Commentator: Fiona Macmillan.
Chair: Merima Bruncevic.

Break

11:15-12:00
Replicability Crisis and Intellectual Property Law, Ofer Tur-Sinai & Or Cohen Sasson.
Commentator: Gabriel Galvez-Behar.
Chair: Frantzeska Papadopoulou.

Lunch

13:30-14:15
Inking IP: Tattoo Machines & Law-Making, Melanie Stockton-Brown.
Commentator: Jeanne Fromer.
Chair: José Bellido.

14:15-15:00
Machines, surveillance and forced labour, Johanna Dahlin.
Commentator: Stina Teilmann Lock.
Chair: Kara Swanson.

Break

15:15-16:45
Emergent Spaces of the Mechanical Author: Ernst Krenek and Interwar Mechanical-Musical Rights, Johan Larson Lindal.

Looming Questions: Could an Indian Weaver Patent a Loom in the Early-Twentieth, Subhadeep Chowdhury.

Chair: Marta Iljadica.

17:00-18:00
Governing board only, Board meeting.

19:00 Dinner.

Day 3

10:00-10:45
The Machinery of Creation. Oulipo Poetry, Copyright & Rules of Constraint, Kathy Bowrey and Janet Chan.
Commentator: Eva Hemmungs Wirtén.
Chair: Marius Buning.

Break

11:00-12:30
The voice and the machine: Performing music and theatre on the early radio (1921-1928), Anna Marie Skråmestø Nesheim.

Towards Innovations in Intellectual Property Studies: Using Topic Modeling to Explore the Limits of Copyright Law, Jamaica Jones. 

Chair: Hyo Yoon Kang.

12:40-13:15
Closing remarks, Organisers/Ulf Petrusson.