Tuesday, November 14, Volen 101, 2:10-3:10 pm. (Refreshments at 2:00pm)
From Napster's peer-to-peer sharing of music, to Amazon's patent on one-click purchasing, to battles over the protectability of databases, the future of the information world is increasingly being shaped in the courtroom. Decisions in lawsuits are defining the nature of intellectual property, the rules for competition, and hence the character of both the industry and our society.
This talk will be a whirlwind overview of intellectual property as it applies to software and other digital information, and is designed for those with little or no legal background. It provides a factual background about the origins and current practice of intellectual property, to enable those outside the legal community to follow current developments and join the discussion.
We begin by addressing the basic question, Does intellectual property need protection? The talk will then review the three standard approaches of trade secret, patent, and copyright, explaining briefly the spirit, intentions, and practice of each. This leads to a discussion of fundamental principles: What is IP attempting to accomplish?
A historical perspective is provided by a brief overview of 500 years of intellectual property development, beginning with the new technological advance that motivated creation of copyright in 1485. The overview will show how some of the problems software poses for the law have been around for half a millenium. The talk will summarize by outlining some of the questions that all of this raises for the nature and character of the information industry and the information society.
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Randall Davis is a Professor of Computer Science at MIT where his research has focused on variety of model-based systems for diagnosis and design. He has also served as Associate Director of MIT's AI Lab, as the President of the AAAI, and as a member of the US Air Force Scientific Advisory Board. In 1990 he served as technical expert to the Court in the case of Computer Associates v. Altai, a case which substantially changed the legal view of software copyright. From 1998-2000 he chaired a study committee for the Computer Science and Telecommunications Board of the National Academy of Science; the report produced by the commmittee -- The Digital Dilemma -- was published in Februry 2000.
Host: Liuba Shrira