On April 5, 2013, American University Washington College of Law will host the Inaugural Cherry Blossom Symposium, exploring intersections between intellectual property and Federal policy. This year’s inaugural symposium will focus on intellectual property and disability rights policy. The symposium will take as a starting point the tensions between Federal intellectual property laws, which promote exclusion as a means of fostering creation and innovation, and disability rights law and policy, which promote universal access and social inclusion. The intersection of intellectual property laws and disability rights legislation and policy is occurring increasingly – including in policy discussions and litigation over access to e-readers for people with visual impairments, over access to closed captioning for media content for people who are deaf or hard of hearing, over access to web content for people with cognitive disabilities and over strategies for promoting innovation in technologies and services that promote access more generally for people with disabilities.

From IP and IT Conferences

University of Alabama School of Law will host A World Without Privacy? What Can/Should Law Do? on April 4, 2013. Details forthcoming.

The Media Law Resource Center will host its London Media Law Conference September 23-24, 2013.

Media defense lawyers from around the world attend the London Conference to discuss the latest developments in libel, privacy, newsgathering and media IP laws. Held biennially, the conference features interactive discussion sessions and distinguished speakers from government, the judiciary and the press.

The Media Law Resource Center and Stanford Law School’s Center for Internet & Society will hold their annual Digital Media Conference May 16-17, 2013. “The conference explores emerging legal issues surrounding digital content in today’s multi-platform world.”

The Journal of Gender, Social Policy & the Law and the Women and the Law Program at American University Washington College of Law presents Gender Matters: Women, Social Policy and the 2012 Election April 2, 2013. “The organizers invite papers from scholars and practitioners (sorry, no student papers) that explore policy choices in a wide range of subjects, including health care, labor and employment, taxation, fiscal policy and social welfare.” The deadline for abstracts is Jan. 7, 2013.

Stanford Law School‘s Center for Internet Law and Society hosts We Robot: Getting Down to Business April 8-9, 2013. The deadline for submitting proposals is Jan. 18, 2013.
Topics of interest include (but are not limited to):

Legal and policy responses to likely effects of robotics on manufacturing or the environment
Perspectives on the interplay between legal frameworks and robotic software and hardware
Intellectual property issues raised by collaboration within robotics (or with robots)
Perspectives on collaboration between legal and technical communities
Tort law issues, including product liability, professional malpractice, and the calculation of damages
Administrative law issues, including FDA or FAA approval
Privacy law and privacy enhancing technologies
Comparative/international perspectives on robotics law
Issues of legal and economic policy, including tax, employment, and corporate governance

In addition to scholarly papers, the organizers invite proposals for demos of cutting-edge commercial applications of robotics or recent technical research that speaks one way or another to the immediate commercial prospects of robots.

Further details here.

The Chinese (Taiwan) Society of International Law will hold the ILA-ASIL Asia-Pacific Research Forum May 15-16, 2013, in Taipei, Taiwan, ROC. The title of the Research Forum is “International Law and Dispute Resolution: Challenges in the Asia Pacific.” The organizing committee welcomes proposals on any topic relating to international law with a focus on the Asia Pacific. Paper proposals must be submitted electronically by Jan. 20, 2013, to ila [at] nccu.edu.tw. The call for papers is here.

The Cambridge Journal of International and Comparative Law (CJICL) invites abstract submissions for participation in its second annual conference, Legal Tradition in a Diverse World, to be held on 18 and 19 May 2013 at the University of Cambridge. The closing date for submissions is 15 January 2013.

On March 1-2, 2013, the Center on Law, Innovation and Economic Growth (CLIEG) of Washington University Law in St. Louis will host the Third Annual Workshop on International and Comparative Law. To apply, send a paper or abstract no later than December 31, 2012.

The International Law through the National Prism Project at the Amsterdam Center for International Law and the MultiRights – The Legitimacy of Multi-Level Human Rights Judiciary Project at the University of Oslo Faculty of Law have issued a call for papers for a conference on “Transnational Judicial Dialogue: Concept, Method, Extent and Effects,” to take place June 21-22, 2013, in Oslo. Here’s the call; the deadline is 15 February 2013.