On January 25, Professor Peter K. Yu, the director of the Center for Law and Intellectual Property at Texas A&M University School of Law, will join 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.

Titled "Innovation and the Triple Helix," the Congress focuses on the role for government, the private sector, and academia in driving innovation forward through cooperative action. The Congress's opening panel will be devoted to the debate on whether intellectual property rights can serve as proxies for innovation.

Speaking after Kappos, who will open the panel with a talk on "Intellectual Property -- The Ark of Innovation," Yu will present on "Imitative Pasts, Innovation Pathways and Intellectual Property." This presentation will draw on the two decades of research Yu has conducted on the Chinese intellectual property system.

Yu is a preeminent expert on Chinese intellectual property law and policy in the United States. He has testified before the U.S. International Trade Commission on intellectual property protection and enforcement in China and has spoken on related issues at the National Academy of Sciences.

At the EIPIN Congress, Yu will also participate in a meeting of the external advisory board of the EIPIN Innovation Society, funded by the European Commission. In addition to Yu, this prestigious five-member board includes Fidelma Macken, a former justice of the Supreme Court of Ireland, and three leading intellectual property academics in Europe.

Kappos, former Under Secretary of Commerce for Intellectual Property, delivered the keynote address at the "Intellectual Property in All the New Places" Symposium ​organized by Yu and CLIP ​in 2016 at Texas A&M University School of Law.