George Mason University School of Law and Microsoft Corporation announce the second in an annual series of conferences on The Law and Economics of Innovation:

Patents and the Commercialization of Innovation

The George Mason/Microsoft Conference Series on the Law and Economics of Innovation will bring together leading academics to present and discuss new scholarship touching on diverse aspects of a key question affecting the technology industry and the process of innovation. Each conference will conclude with a roundtable discussion among top technology industry representatives and regulators to begin to assess the concrete implications of the scholarship for the development of innovative industries.

This second conference in the series will address the role of patents in the commercialization of innovation—an area of significant and enduring controversy. In particular, the conference will focus on three interrelated aspects of the debate over the law and economics of patents: The intersection of patents and antitrust, particularly in technology standards; the economics of the patent system and patent reform; and the proper understanding (and implications) of patents as property.

Audio Files from the Conference Are Now Available

Presenters at this year’s conference include:

• Richard Epstein, University of Chicago Law School
  Keynote Address
• Scott Baker, University of North Carolina Law School
• Luigi Franzoni, University of Bologna Faculty of Economics
• Damien Geradin, Tilburg University Law & Economics and Howrey LLP and the College of Europe
• Scott Kieff, Washington University in St. Louis Law School and the Hoover Institution
• Bruce Kobayashi, George Mason University School of Law
• Michael Meurer, Boston University School of Law
• Adam Mossoff, George Mason University School of Law (Currently Michigan State University Law School)
• Greg Sidak, Criterion Economics
• Henry Smith, Yale Law School
• David Teece, Haas Business School (U.C. Berkeley) and LECG

Commenters/Moderators:

• Robert A. Armitage, Eli Lilly and Company
• Michael Carrier, Rutgers University School of Law
• George Cary, Cleary Gottlieb
• Eric Claeys, George Mason University School of Law
• Chuck Fish, Former Chief Patent Counsel, Time Warner Inc.
• John Golden, University of Texas Law School
• Roy Hoffinger, Qualcomm
• Geoffrey Manne, Microsoft and Lewis & Clark Law School
• Jason Mendelson, Foundry Group
• Scott Stern, Kellogg School of Management, Northwestern University
• Dick Wilder, Microsoft
• Josh Wright, George Mason University School of Law

Participation is free of charge. Registration is required and lunch is included.

Space is limited.

Application for approval for 4.0 Virginia CLE credit hours (0.0 ethics) is pending with the Virginia Mandatory Continuing Legal Education Board.

For further information, contact Kristine at lawconf@gmu.edu.

Eric R. Claeys, Joshua D. Wright, and Geoffrey Manne are this year’s conference organizers.