On June 25, Professor Peter K. Yu, the Director of the Center for Law and Intellectual Property (CLIP) at Texas A&M University School of Law, delivered a presentation at the opening session of the "Constitutional Hedges of Intellectual Property" Workshop at St. Anne's College at the University of Oxford in England.
Yu presented "The Second Transformation of the International Intellectual Property Regime" alongside Professors Alexander Peukert of Goethe University Frankfurt in Germany and Rochelle Dreyfuss of New York University School of Law. His presentation explores the growing interaction between intellectual property and investment law and the recent attempts by private corporations to use investor-state dispute settlement to address cross-border intellectual property disputes.
"About thirty years ago, the arrival of international trade law dramatically transformed the international intellectual property regime," said Yu. "Today, we are at this critical juncture when the arrival of international investment law may transform this regime once again. I am naturally delighted to have the opportunity to return to Oxford to explore this important development with other leading scholars on international intellectual property law."
While at Oxford, Yu also participated in a pre-conference workshop at Mansfield College. The workshop featured papers from Ph.D. students covering issues ranging from the WTO tobacco plain packaging dispute to online video-hosting platforms to the proposed EU data producer’s right.
Yu, who holds a joint appointment at the School of Law and the Department of Communication at Texas A&M University, is a frequent visitor to the University of Oxford. In the late 1990s and early 2000s, he served as a research associate at the Programme in Comparative Media Law & Policy at the Centre for Socio-Legal Studies at Wolfson College. He also spoke at multiple events organized by the Oxford Internet Institute. In June 2013, the Institute hosted the 11th Chinese Internet Research Conference. Co-founded by Yu in 2003, that conference has since become the leading annual event in this highly specialized field.
Expanding CLIP collaboration in Europe
In the past semester, Yu has worked tirelessly to build and expand collaborations between CLIP and leading academic institutions in Europe. These collaborations help consolidate the Center’s position as a leading international hub for research and education in the intellectual property field. They also create synergy with the Law School's new intellectual property graduate program, which offers LL.M. (Master of Laws) degrees to lawyers and M.Jur. (Master of Jurisprudence) degrees to non-lawyers.
In the past two years, peer surveys conducted by U.S. News and World Report have ranked the intellectual property program at Texas A&M University School of Law seventh in the nation.
In January, Yu joined David Kappos, the former director of the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office, at the opening panel of the 19th Congress of the European Intellectual Property Institutes Network (EIPIN) at Maastricht University in the Netherlands. He also delivered his latest research on the protection of clinical trial data at the "TRIPS and the Life Sciences: Data Exclusivities and TRIPS Art. 39.3" webinar organized by the Centre for Information and Innovation Law at the University of Copenhagen in Denmark.
In March, he was competitively selected to undertake research collaboration with the IT|IP Law Group at Vienna University of Economics and Business in Vienna, Austria. At the research group's workshop on "Legal Implications of the Platform Economy," he offered a critical evaluation of the European Commission's recent proposal for the creation of a new data producer's right. Titled "Data Producer's Right in the Platform Economy," his evaluation is forthcoming from Medien und Recht International (International Media, IP & IT Law Review).
In May, he collaborated with the ASK (Art, Science, Knowledge) Centre for Research on Management and Economics of Arts and Culture Institutions and the School of Law at Bocconi University to organize the 10th Annual Conference on Innovation and Communications Law in Milan, Italy. He presented his forthcoming article on "Data Producer's Right" and chaired the opening panel on "Internet Governance, Fundamental Rights and Platforms' Interests." Yu co-founded the conference in 2008 with colleagues at the University of Louisville and the University of Turku in Finland. While at Bocconi University, he also delivered two lectures on the rapidly-changing digital intellectual property environment, covering issues such as user-generated content, online streaming platforms, 3D printing and machine-generated data.
In June, Yu served as a featured speaker at the 2018 annual meeting of the Norwegian Copyright Society, delivering a presentation on "Copyright and Fundamental Rights." He also presented his forthcoming book chapter, "Realigning TRIPS-Plus Negotiations with UN Sustainable Development Goals," at the "Intellectual Property and Sustainability" Workshop at the University of Oslo in Norway. This workshop was organized by the Research Group in Markets, Innovations and Competition, the Research Group in Natural Resources Law and the SMART Project at the University of Oslo.
In August, Yu will visit Hanken School of Economics in Finland to participate in ATRIP Congress 2018. He served as a visiting professor at Hanken in 2015 and currently sits on the executive committee of the International Association for the Advancement of Teaching and Research in Intellectual Property (ATRIP). He will also chair the panel on "Fairness, Morality and Ordre Public: What Does it Mean for Indigenous Peoples?" at the ATRIP Congress. The panel will cover issues he has worked recently with Native American groups to address through the international intergovernmental negotiations on genetic resources and associated traditional knowledge at the World Intellectual Property Organization.
Apart from these academic collaborations, Yu currently serves on the external advisory board of the EIPIN Innovation Society, the European joint doctoral program funded by the European Commission. In addition to Yu, this prestigious five-member advisory board includes Fidelma Macken, a former justice of the Supreme Court of Ireland, and three leading intellectual property academics in Europe.