The growing importance of innovation and knowledge in our society has made intellectual property a critical issue for both scholars and policymakers alike. At the same time that Congress is considering major proposals to reform both the patent and copyright laws, scholars are just beginning to explore the policy implications of such emerging disciplines as positive political theory, new institutional economics, imperfect competition, and social norms. The conference on "Foundations of Intellectual Property Reform," co-sponsored by the University of Pennsylvania Law Review and the Penn Center for Technology, Innovation, and Competition, will explore how these new theoretical approaches provide new insights into how best to foster the innovation and creativity that have become such important pillars for our economy and society.

Please register by completing the form in the symposium brochure, or by sending an email with your registration information and the title "symposium" in the subject line.

9:15 AM - 9:30 AM Welcome
Michael A. Fitts, Dean (Penn)

9:30 AM - 12:00 AM Intellectual Property Meets Administrative Law: Institutional Reform at the Patent and Trademark Office
Michael Abramowicz (GW) and John Duffy (GW), Ending the Patent Monopoly
Clarisa Long (Columbia), Interest Groups in Patent and Copyright Law Reform
Adam Mossoff (George Mason), The Use and Abuse of IP at the Birth of the Administrative State
Arti Rai (Duke), An Administrative Approach to Patent Reform
Commentator: Jonathan Masur (UChicago)

12:00 PM - 1:30 PM Lunch

1:30 PM - 3:30 PM Addressing Patent Quality: The Theory, Practice, and Implications of the Way Patents Are Granted
Dan L. Burk (UC Irvine) and Mark Lemley (Stanford University), The Perils of Claim Construction
F. Scott Kieff (Washington University), The Case for Preferring Patent Validity Litigation over Second Window Review and Gold Plated Patents
R. Polk Wagner (Penn), Understanding Patent Quality Mechanisms
Commentator: Lee Petherbridge (Loyola, LA)

3:45 PM - 5:45 PM Intellectual Property and the New Institutional Economics
Oren Bar-Gill (NYU) and Gideon Parchomovsky (Penn), Law and the Boundaries of Technology Intensive Firms
Jonathan Barnett (USC), Is Intellectual Property Trivial?
Henry Smith (Yale), Indirectness and Institutions in Intellectual Property
Commentator: Philip Weiser (Colorado)

6:00 PM Cocktail Reception (Great Hall)

9:00 AM - 10:30 AM Rethinking the Monopoly Model of Intellectual Property
David Abrams (Penn), An Empirical Investigation of the Welfare Implications of Patent Protection
John Conley (Vanderbilt) and Christopher S. Yoo (Penn), Copyright and Impure Public Goods: A Formal Model
Commentator: Joel Waldfogel (Wharton)

10:45 AM - 12:15 PM Intellectual Property and Social Norms
Ben Depoorter (BU/UMiami), Explaining Copyright Disobedience: Technology, Norms and the Timing of Law Making
Steven Hetcher (Vanderbilt), Regulating User-Generated Content with Social Norms
Commentator: Peter Siegelman (Connecticut)

12:15 PM Conference Adjournment