Senior Associate Dean Sunder and Professor Peter Lee participate in roundtable on “The Psychology and Sociology of Creativity and Intellectual Property” at Stanford Law School

  • by Madhavi Sunder

On September 9 and 10, Professor Peter Lee and I participated in an invitation-only roundtable on "The Psychology and Sociology of Creativity and Intellectual Property" at the Stanford Law School.

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I took this photo during the roundtable event. Professor Lee is second from left.

Professor Lee spoke to the question of "Why Do Companies Patent?" Professor Lee said smaller companies and larger companies may have different reasons for patenting, and similarly, that companies and their employees have different motivations for patenting. In addition, he noted the sociological evolution regarding patents at universities, from anti-commercial to seeing patents as part of the university's institutional mission.

I was invited to speak on "The Psychology and Sociology of Brands and Trademarks." I discussed how brand value is as much a function of the consumer as the producer. Brands tell us not just about the product but the buyer - about the buyer's identity and social status. While cognitive psychology understands branding as a science (where MRI readings can assist our understanding of how consumers react to brands), literary theory understands branding as an art, involving storytelling and archetypes. There are excellent chapters on the psychology and sociology of branding in a recent book I co-edited with NYU Professor of Law Barton Beebe and Hong Kong University Professor of Law, Haochen Sun, called "The Luxury Economy and Intellectual Property," published by Oxford University Press. 

I also spoke of the increasing role of design patents as a tool for protecting brand image, and of a new paper in which Professor Lee and I propose reforms to design patent law. The paper, "The Law of Look and Feel," is forthcoming in the Southern California Law Review. You can read a draft of the article here: http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=2733780.

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Intellectual Property Patent Law