Past Events
CILS - "Innovation, Law, and Society at King Hall and Beyond"
Monday, January 30, 2023 | 12 - 1 PM | King Hall, Rm 1001 | Recording Link
This will be the launch event for the Center for Innovation, Law, and Society with opening remarks by Dean Kevin Johnson and featuring Director Professor Peter Lee along with fellow core CILS faculty Professors Al Lin, Lisa Ikemoto, Stacy-Ann Elvy, and Elizabeth Joh discussing hot topics in their respective fields.
The Center for Innovation, Law, and Society (CILS) seeks to explore the legal and social implications of innovation, science, and technology. The center builds upon the work of UC Davis School of Law faculty members examining numerous fields at the intersection of law and innovation, including artificial intelligence, bioethics, data privacy, environmental law, health law, intellectual property, and social media. The center hosts leading speakers who share their insights on the opportunities and challenges of new innovations and the role of law in shaping their development and operation.
In exploring these issues, CILS adopts a conscientiously broad conception of “law and innovation.” While the center certainly addresses legal dimensions of new technologies, it also considers nontechnological innovations, such as creative works, novel social practices, and business innovations.
Professor Jennifer Urban, UC Berkeley Law and Chair, California Privacy Protection Agency Board
Thursday, February 16, 2023 | 12 - 1 PM | King Hall, Rm 1301 | Recording Link
Jennifer M. Urban was appointed by California Governor Gavin Newsom in March 2021 to be the inaugural Chair of the California Privacy Protection Agency Board. Urban is a Clinical Professor of Law at the University of California, Berkeley School of Law, where she is Director of Policy Initiatives at the Samuelson Law, Technology & Public Policy Clinic. Prior to joining Berkeley Law, she founded and directed the USC Intellectual Property & Technology Law Clinic at the University of Southern California, Gould School of Law. Before that, she was the Samuelson Clinic’s first fellow and an attorney with the Venture Law Group in Silicon Valley. She holds a B.A. in biological science (concentration in neurobiology and behavior) from Cornell University and a J.D. (with law and technology certificate) from Berkeley Law.
Professor Urban’s research considers how values such as free expression, freedom to innovate, and privacy are mediated by technology, the laws that govern technology, and private-ordering systems. Many of her recent papers are available on the Social Science Research Network.
Professor Urban's clinic students represent clients in numerous public interest cases and projects at the intersection of technological change and societal interests such as civil liberties, innovation, and creative expression. Recent clinic projects include work on individual privacy rights, copyright and free expression, artists’ rights, digital libraries, free and open source licensing, government surveillance, the “smart” electricity grid, biometrics, and defensive patent licensing.
Corynne McSherry, Electronic Frontier Foundation
Thursday, March 23, 2023 | 12 - 1 PM | King Hall, Rm 1301 & via Zoom | Recording Link
Corynne McSherry is the Legal Director at EFF, specializing in intellectual property, open access, and free speech issues. Her favorite cases involve defending online fair use, political expression, and the public domain against the assault of copyright maximalists. As a litigator, she has represented Professor Lawrence Lessig, Public.Resource.Org, the Yes Men, and a dancing baby, among others, and one of her first cases at EFF was In re Sony BMG CD Technologies Litigation (aka the "rootkit" case). She was named one of California's Top Entertainment Lawyers and was also named AmLaw's "Litigator of the Week" for her work on Lenz v. Universal. Her policy work includes leading EFF’s effort to fix copyright (including the successful effort to shut down the Stop Online Piracy Act, or SOPA), promote net neutrality, and promote best practices for online expression. She testified before Congress about the Digital Millennium Copyright Act and Section 230. Corynne comments regularly on digital rights issues and has been quoted in a variety of outlets, including NPR, CBS News, Fox News, the New York Times, Billboard, the Wall Street Journal, and Rolling Stone. Prior to joining EFF, Corynne was a litigator at the law firm of Bingham McCutchen, LLP. Corynne has a B.A. from the University of California at Santa Cruz, a Ph.D from the University of California at San Diego, and a J.D. from Stanford Law School. While in law school, Corynne published Who Owns Academic Work?: Battling for Control of Intellectual Property (Harvard University Press, 2001).
Please contact Nina Bell at nbell@ucdavis.edu with any questions.
Professor Colleen V. Chien, Santa Clara University School of Law (Virtual)
Thursday, April 13, 2023 | 12 - 1 PM | King Hall, Viewing in Rm 1301 & via Zoom | Recording Link
Colleen Chien is Professor at Santa Clara University School of Law where she teaches, mentors students, and leads multi-disciplinary teams to conduct empirical research on patents, intellectual property, and the criminal justice system. From 2013-2015, she served in the Obama White House as the Senior Advisor on Intellectual Property and Innovation to the Chief Technology Officer, working on a broad range of patent, copyright, technology transfer, open innovation, and other issues. Professor Chien is internationally known for her research and writing on domestic and international patent law and policy issues. She has testified on multiple occasions before both houses of Congress, the US Patent and Trademark Office, the Department of Justice, and the Federal Trade Commission and frequently lectures at national law conferences. She has published several in-depth empirical studies, including of patent prosecution in the US and abroad, patent examination trends, inequality and innovation, patent litigation, and patent-assertion entities (PAEs). In the realm of criminal justice, she is the founder of the Paper Prisons initiative (paperprisons.org), a multi-disciplinary research initiative of over 20 collaborators, partners, and affiliates that uses research, technology tools, and empathy to boost the employment and other outcomes of people who have had contact with the criminal justice system by documenting and narrowing the “second chance gap,” between those eligible for and receiving second chance relief. In 2019, she was Justin D’Atri Visiting Professor of Law at Columbia Law School and a visiting Professor at the University of Chicago Law School.
Professor Chien is among the top 20-cited intellectual property and cyberlaw scholars in the US and is a recipient of the prestigious American Law Institute’s Early Career Medal, awarded every other year to one or two outstanding early-career law professors; the Intellectual Property Vanguard Award (by the California Bar Association) and the Eric Yamamoto Emerging Scholar award (by the Conference of Asian Pacific American Law Faculty); she has also been named one of the 50 Most Influential People in Intellectual Property in the World (by Intellectual Asset Magazine) and a Woman of Influence and a Tech Law Trailblazer (by the National Law Journal and the Recorder) for her work devising “the Second Chances and Empathy Hackathon” and work on executive agency policy pilots.
CILS - "The Genome Defense and the Civil Rights Case Against Gene Patenting in America" with Professor Jorge Contreras, University of Utah
Thursday, September 21, 2023 | 12 - 1 PM | King Hall, Rm 1301 | Recording Link
Jorge L. Contreras is the James T. Jensen Endowed Professor for Transactional Law and Director of the Program on Intellectual Property and Technology Law at the University of Utah S.J. Quinney College of Law, with a secondary appointment in the Department of Human Genetics, University of Utah School of Medicine. Professor Contreras’s research focuses on intellectual property, technical standards, antitrust law and science policy. He is the editor or author of twelve books and more than 150 scholarly articles and chapters. During his career he has served on advisory committees of the US National Institutes of Health, the National Academies of Science, and as Co-Chair of the National Conference of Lawyers and Scientists. Professor Contreras’s award-winning book, The Genome Defense: Inside the Epic Legal Battle to Determine Who Owns Your DNA (NY: Hachette/Algonquin, 2021), which has received praise from media outlets from the New York Times and Wall St. Journal to Nature and Law360, describes the landmark civil rights litigation that ended gene patenting in America. He is a graduate of Harvard Law School (JD) and Rice University (BSEE, BA), and an elected member of the American Law Institute.
Program overview:
When attorney Chris Hansen learned that the U.S. government was issuing patents for human genes to biotech companies, his first thought was, How can a corporation own what makes us who we are? Then he discovered that women were being charged exorbitant fees to test for hereditary breast and ovarian cancers, tests they desperately needed—all because Myriad Genetics had patented the famous BRCA genes. So he sued them.
Jorge L. Contreras, one of the nation’s foremost authorities on human genetics law, has devoted years to investigating the groundbreaking civil rights case known as AMP v. Myriad. In The Genome Defense Contreras gives us the view from inside as Hansen and his team of ACLU lawyers, along with a committed group of activists, scientists, and physicians, take their one-in-a-million case all the way to the U.S. Supreme Court. Contreras interviewed more than a hundred key players involved in all aspects of the case—from judges and policy makers to ethicists and genetic counselors, as well as cancer survivors and those whose lives would be impacted by the decision—expertly weaving together their stories into a fascinating narrative of this pivotal moment in history.
The Genome Defense is a powerful and compelling story about how society must balance scientific discovery with corporate profits and the rights of all people.
CILS - Cindy Dole '09, Associate General Counsel at Samsung Catalyst Fund
Monday, October 16, 2023 | 12 - 1 PM | King Hall, Rm 1301 | Recording Link
Cindy Dole '09 is an Associate General Counsel & Corporate Secretary at the Samsung Catalyst Fund, Samsung Electronics’ evergreen multi-stage venture capital fund that invests in deep-tech infrastructure and data-enabled platforms. Investments span across multiple domains including data center and cloud, artificial intelligence, networking and 5G, automotive, sensors, quantum computing and beyond.
Prior to joining Samsung, she was an attorney at Morgan Lewis, where she worked with technology clients on intellectual property issues and strategy in cross-border and domestic transactions involving mergers and acquisitions, joint ventures, initial public offerings, and venture capital financing. Before becoming an attorney, she worked in marketing communications at tech companies.
Cindy holds a BA from UCLA and a JD from UC Davis.
CILS - Professor Zubair Shafiq, Dept. of Computer Science, UC Davis
Monday, November 13, 2023 | 12 - 1 PM | King Hall, Rm 1301 | Recording Link
Zubair Shafiq is an associate professor of computer science at University of California, Davis.
He received his Ph.D. from Michigan State University in 2014. His research focuses on making the Internet private, secure, and performant using empirically grounded measurement and modeling methods. He is a recipient of Chancellor's Fellowship (2022-2023), Dean's Scholar Award (2020), NSF CAREER Award (2018), Andreas Pfitzmann PETS Best Student Paper Award (2018), ACM IMC Best Paper Award (2017), IEEE ICNP Best Paper Award (2012), Fitch-Beach Outstanding Graduate Research Award (2013), and the Dean's Plaque of Excellence for undergraduate research (2007, 2008).
CILS Presents UC Davis and Jindal Global Law School Online Symposium: Navigating the Promise and Perils of Innovation: Law and Technology at a Crossroads
Friday, January 19, 2024 | 7:45 a.m. - 10 a.m. PT | 9:15 p.m. – 11:30 p.m. India | Program | Recording
Speakers
Avirup Bose, Associate Professor and Assistant Director, Centre for International Trade and Economics Laws, Jindal Global Law School
Krishna Deo Singh Chauhan, Associate Professor, Jindal Global Law School
Stacy-Ann Elvy, Professor of Law and Martin Luther King, Jr. Hall Research Scholar
Indranath Gupta, Professor and Dean of Research & Controller of Examinations, Jindal Global Law School
Suvrajyoti Gupta, Associate Professor and Assistant Director, Centre for Alternative Dispute Resolution, Jindal Global Law School
Peter Lee, Martin Luther King Jr. Professor of Law; Director, Center for Innovation, Law, and Society
Albert Lin, Martin Luther King Jr. Professor of Law
Elizabeth Joh, Martin Luther King Jr. Professor of Law
CILS Presents Professor Lydia de la Torre, UC Davis Law and Vinhcent Le, The Greenlining Institute
Monday, February 5, 2024 | 12 - 1 PM | King Hall, Room 1301 | Livestream
Professor Lydia de la Torre is a dual-qualified attorney (US/EU) and teaches privacy, data protection, and A.I. courses at UC Davis Law and U.C. Law San Francisco (formerly UC Hastings).
Prof. de la Torre is the founding partner of the teaching law firm Golden Data Law (GDL). GDL serves clients in the not-for-profit sector, and its mission is to mentor a diverse and inclusive group of law students and recent grads so that they can grow into solid ethical professionals. Prior to her appointment, Prof. de la Torre served as an of-counsel to Squire Patton Boggs and had in-house counsel roles at several multinational organizations.
Prof. de la Torre was appointed to the CPPA Board by the California Senate President pro Tempore Toni G. Atkins in March 2021 and served on the Advisory Board of Californians for Consumer Privacy (CPPA) during the Prop 24 ballot campaign. The CPPA is a California state government agency created by the California Privacy Rights Act of 2020 (CPRA) as the first dedicated privacy regulator in the United States.
She is an international expert in data protection issues and the European Union's approach to regulating data and A.I. in particular. Her background brings unique experience-based knowledge to the CPPA Board.
As Senior Legal Counsel of Tech Equity, Vinhcent Le (he/him/his) leads Greenlining’s work to close the digital divide, protect consumer privacy, ensure algorithms are fair and that technology builds economic opportunity for communities of color. In this role, Vinhcent helps develop and implement policies to increase broadband affordability and digital inclusion as well as bring transparency and accountability to automated decision systems. Vinhcent also serves on several regulatory boards including the California Privacy Protection Agency. Vinhcent received his J.D. from the University of California, Irvine School of Law and a B.A. in Political Science from the University of California, San Diego. Prior to Greenlining, Vinhcent advocated for clients as a law clerk at the Public Defender’s Office, the Office of Medicare Hearing and Appeals and the Small Business Administration.
CILS Presents Professor Carl Shapiro, UC Berkeley: Evolution of the Merger Guidelines: Is This Fox Too Clever by Half?
Monday, March 18, 2024 | 12 - 1 PM | King Hall, Room 1301 | Livestream
Carl Shapiro is a Distinguished Professor of the Graduate School at the Haas School of Business and the Department of Economics at the University of California at Berkeley. He also is the Transamerica Professor of Business Strategy Emeritus at the Haas School of Business. Shapiro has published extensively in the areas of industrial organization, competition policy, patents, the economics of innovation, and competitive strategy. Shapiro had the honor of serving as a Member of the President’s Council of Economic Advisers during 2011-12. He was the Deputy Assistant Attorney General for Economics at the Antitrust Division of the U.S. Department of Justice during 2009-2011, a position he also held during 1995-96. Shapiro also has testified as an expert witness on behalf of the government in a number of high-profile antitrust cases. His publications and curriculum vitae can be found at https://faculty.haas.berkeley.edu/shapiro/.
His talk will focus on the 2023 Merger Guidelines, which make some notable improvements over the 2010 Horizontal Merger Guidelines. They give greater emphasis to the idea that predicting the competitive effects of a proposed merger is inherently difficult and that to block a merger the government need only show that the merger may substantially lessen competition, not that it will do so. They also give greater emphasis to dynamic competition and innovation, especially regarding acquisitions of potential entrants, and they add useful material on multi-sided platforms. However, the treatment of market definition in the 2023 Merger Guidelines is likely to weaken horizontal merger enforcement by demoting the role of the hypothetical monopolist test, which is used to define markets for the purpose of measuring market shares, and by removing extensive material from prior guidelines which explained why market shares measured in narrower markets tend to be more informative than market shares measured in broader markets. The 2023 Merger Guidelines lower the market concentration thresholds that trigger a presumption by the antitrust enforcement agencies that a merger may substantially lessen competition, but the enforcement data suggest that change will have little effect in practice. The 2023 Merger Guidelines also are likely to lead to less effective deterrence of harmful mergers because they are not well targeted at the mergers most likely to substantially lessen competition.
Transatlantic Tech Exchange Roundtable with Members of the European Parliament, co-sponsored by CILS, the California International Law Center (CILC), the German Marshall Fund, and UC Davis School of Law
Friday, March 22, 2024 | 2 – 5 p.m. | King Hall, Faculty Workroom
The Transatlantic Tech Exchange Roundtable will provide an opportunity for King Hall faculty to share cutting-edge research with Members of the European Parliament and representatives of civil society groups. Topics to be addressed include artificial intelligence, online content moderation, the Internet of Things, and digital privacy. The Roundtable is arranged in conjunction with the California International Law Center (CILC), the German Marhsall Fund, and UC Davis School of Law.
Speakers:
Beth Greenwood, Associate Dean for International Programs
Peter Lee, Martin Luther King Jr. Professor of Law; Director, Center for Innovation, Law, and Society
Ashutosh Bhagwat, Boochever and Bird Endowed Chair for the Study and Teaching of Freedom and Equality and Distinguished Professor of Law
Stacy-Ann Elvy, Professor of Law and Martin Luther King, Jr. Hall Research Scholar
Lydia de la Torre, Visiting Lecturer and Board Member, California Privacy Protection Agency
Discussants:
Miapetra Kumpula-Natri, Member of the European Parliament (Finland)
Dragos Tudorache, Member of the European Parliament (Romania)
Petar Vitanov, Member of the European Parliament (Bulgaria)
Zeljana Zovko, Member of the European Parliament (Croatia)
Astrid Ziebarth, German Marshall Fund