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/

Looking forward to welcoming Professor Kwall for her virtual lecture on "The Torah's View on Creativity and an Author's Moral Rights." Join us next Thursday at noon (CT)!

Delighted to join the Pauline Newman Inn of Court and the Giles Rich Inn of Court for their joint event on AI and IP. Terry Rea (Crowell & Morning) ably moderated a lively session featuring remarks by USPTO Director Andrei Iancu, Dan Spulber (Northwestern Management), Yeen Tham (IBM), Cam Gatta (Microsoft), and me. I spoke about global trends in AI, the most important factors to obtaining IP protection globally, and the specifics of obtaining and enforcing IP. IP practitioners need to be away of how training data raise privacy and antitrust concerns. National IP offices have an important role to play in leading harmonization efforts. AI adoption will move at the speed of trust: geopolitical trust, trust between national governments and the governed, and between shareholders and their companies. IP issues in text and data mining, authorship and ownership, inventorship, disclosure liability for all forms of infringement, and algocracy will be issues to watch in the coming years. Paraphrasing Churchill, I concluded by noting that "This is not the end. It is not even the beginning of the end. It is, perhaps, the end of the beginning." Thanks to Debbie Yellin (Crowell & Morning), Alex Sofocleous (USPTO), Christine Behncke (USPTO), and IU Law (Bloomington) student Richa Patel for a great session.