On July 17–20, 2018, Professor Peter K. Yu, director of the Center for Law and Intellectual Property at Texas A&M University, delivered a series of lectures on the changing international intellectual property regime as a visiting professor at the Graduate School of Law at Hokkaido University in Sapporo, Japan. Yu delivered the lectures at the Hokkaido Summer Institute at the invitation of Professor Yoshiyuki Tamura, one of Japan's leading intellectual property scholars and the director of the Research Institute for Information Law and Policy at Hokkaido University.
Tailored to graduate students and junior researchers in the intellectual property field, Yu's lectures covered topics ranging from the origin of the international intellectual property regime to the establishment of the World Trade Organization and its TRIPS Agreement to the recent negotiations on the Trans-Pacific Partnership, the Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership and other bilateral, regional and plurilateral trade agreements. Yu also discussed the latest technological challenges to the international intellectual property regime and the future of that regime.
"I am deeply honored by the invitation of Tamura Sensei to return to Sapporo to deliver these lectures at the Hokkaido Summer Institute," said Yu, who holds a joint appointment at the School of Law and the Department of Communication and is one of the world's preeminent scholars on Asian intellectual property law and policy.
"Our intellectual property law program at Texas A&M University prides itself on our ability to train the next generation of transnational lawyers with interests in Asian intellectual property law and policy. My recent visit to Hokudai has not only provided up-to-date knowledge about the latest intellectual property and technological developments in Japan, but has also deepened my understanding of the educational and research environments in Asia."
Yu has been a frequent visitor to leading educational and research institutions in Japan. Three of his widely cited works on international intellectual property law have been translated into Japanese and are available from the Intellectual Property Law and Policy Journal (知的財産法政策学研究). At the 2016 Asia-Pacific Innovation Network Conference at Kyushu University in Fukuoka, Japan, he joined the board of directors of the Asia-Pacific Innovation Network. He previously served on the network's founding management committee.
While in Asia, Yu delivered lectures on online streaming platforms, 3D printing and the protection of machine-generated data at the Intellectual Property Research Institute of Xiamen University in China. The institute has been a longstanding institutional partner of the Center for Law and Intellectual Property at Texas A&M University (CLIP). In July 2015, CLIP and Xiamen University jointly organized the 7th Annual Conference on Innovation and Communications Law.
In his hometown of Hong Kong, Yu spoke at a faculty seminar on "The Future of Fair Use Models" at the School of Law of the City University of Hong Kong. Titled "Customizing Fair use Transplants," his presentation drew on his experience as a pro bono advisor for internet user groups and select Hong Kong legislators during the last round of digital copyright reform in Hong Kong.
Yu currently sits on the advisory board of the Law and Technology Centre at the Faculty of Law of the University of Hong Kong. He has also taught frequently as a visiting professor at the University of Hong Kong and in the summer program jointly organized by the Faculty of Law of the Chinese University of Hong Kong and the World Trade Institute in Bern, Switzerland. From 2008 to 2011, he served as Wenlan Scholar Chair Professor at Zhongnan University of Economics and Law in Wuhan, China.
Texas A&M has one of the leading intellectual property programs in the United States, with a strong focus on intellectual property law and policy in Asia. Three of its professors—Irene Calboli, Srividhya Ragavan and Yu—have taught in Asia and conduct research on intellectual property law and policy in the region. In the past two years, peer surveys conducted by U.S. News and World Report have ranked the Texas A&M intellectual property law program seventh in the United States.