ISD Lecture

Intellectual Property in an Information and Services Economy

Tuesday, April 10, 2007
5:00 pm to 6:00 pm
Pamela Samuelson, School of Information and School of Law (Boalt Hall)

Intellectual property has not played a very significant role in the services economy so far. Trademark and trade secrets have been far more important than patent or copyright. Copyright may become more important over time because of the role of software in services, but the service itself is beyond the scope of copyright, no matter how original it may be. Unless the Supreme Court reviews business method or software patents on subject matter grounds, it is also likely that patents will play an increasing role in services economy. It’s debatable whether this is a good or a bad thing.

Pamela Samuelson is the Richard M. Sherman Distinguished Professor of Law & Information at the University of California, Berkeley, as well as a Director of the Berkeley Center for Law & Technology and an advisor to the Samuelson High Technology Law & Public Policy Clinic. She teaches courses on intellectual property, cyberlaw and information policy. She has written and spoken extensively about the challenges that new information technologies pose for traditional legal regimes, especially for intellectual property law. She is a Fellow of the Association for Computing Machinery (ACM), a Contributing Editor of Communications of the ACM, a past Fellow of the John D. & Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation, and an Honorary Professor of the University of Amsterdam. She is a member of the Board of Directors of the Electronic Frontier Foundation and of the Open Source Application Foundation, as well as a member of the Advisory Board for the Electronic Privacy Information Center.

Last updated:

March 26, 2015