Delighted to learn that Texas A&M University recently named Peter Yu as a Regents Professor. On my invitation, Peter joined our advisory board this year. Together with Hugh Hansen, Peter and I jointly organized a roundtable on legal realism in February.
This Regents Professor designation is the most prestigious award from the Texas A&M System to highlight exemplary faculty. Peter is the first professor from the School of Law to receive this systemwide honor.
As Dean Robert Ahdieh noted “Hard to imagine a better statement of Professor Yu’s contributions and character than the introduction to a letter supporting his nomination to a distinguished society: Describing his productivity, the author wrote that ‘if academics were a race, Professor Yu would be lapping us all without breaking a sweat.’ Equally, though, the letter praises him as a ‘paragon of kindness and colleagueship. He is never too busy or too important to ignore a colleague across the country.'”
https://bit.ly/33GGlwN

Today IPWatchdog featured reflections by speakers and attendees at our recently concluded 64th Annual IP Conference. Titled “Intellectual Property Policy: Four Observations, Five Questions, and a Warning,” the post also features a summary of former Chief Judge Michel’s keynote address. We appreciate IPWatchdog for memorializing and sharing key takeaways from our conference.

Read it here:

Shared with IPWatchdog my thoughts on the progress on what we know about the law’s take on AI and what we don’t. Happy Thanksgiving!

Joined European Patent Office (EPO) officials and U.S. patent attorneys for the 36th US Bar EPO Liasion Council Meeting. Both sides discussed a wide range of topics, including Covid-19’s impact and measures at the EPO, the Unitary Patent/Unified Patent Court, plant and animal patentability at the EPO, as well as artificial intelligence (AI) at the EPO and USPTO.

I was honored to address the Council on AI and spoke about areas of convergence, divergence, and the importance of plurilateral and multilateral efforts to harmonize safe harbors, redlines, and regulatory sandboxes. Covid-19 has bolstered both the need for countries to work together as well as the means to do so early and often. Let’s make the most of it.

EPO’s press release here: https://www.epo.org/news-events/news/2020/20201120.html

UIC John Marshall Law School’s 64th Annual IP Law Conference is a one-day, virtual event providing an exceptional opportunity to meet online with newsmakers and influencers, to learn and discuss the most exciting and important developments in the field, and to be empowered to help create better laws and policies that promote innovation, creativity, and entrepreneurship.

Featuring 14 sessions with more than 80 world-class faculty, this year’s conference embraces advances in video-conferencing technology to provide virtual networking receptions throughout the day. Given the COVID-19 pandemic’s effects across the globe, we gave this consideration particular attention and selected a virtual platform that provides presenters and attendees the same seamless transition between panel discussions and networking for which the conference has become known.

We are pleased to welcome the keynote speaker for the 64th Annual IP Conference, Hon. Paul Michel (ret.), former Chief Judge of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit and Chair of our Center’s advisory board. The title of his keynote is “The Arc of American Patent Law”

Bloomberg, IPKat, and IPWatchdog will be onsite this year to report on the Conference. Hope to see you there! https://ipconference.jmls.uic.edu/2020/