Since its establishment in 2009, by the Melbourne Law School in conjunction with the Institute of Patent and Trade Mark Attorneys of Australia (IPTA), the annual Francis Gurry Lecture on Intellectual Property has rightly become a highlight on the Australian IP calendar. Past presenters include former Chief Justice of the High Court of Australia Robert French AC, judge of of the Court of Appeal of England and Wales the Right Honourable Lord Justice Colin Birss, Director General of the World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO) Daren Tang, renowned UK legal academic and founder of the IPKat blog Dr Jeremy Phillips and, of course, the eponymous former Director General of WIPO Francis Gurry himself.
This year, circumstances have resulted in a rather late finalisation of arrangements for the Francis Gurry Lecture, and registration and other details are still to come. However, the speaker has been confirmed as Shira Perlmutter, Register of Copyrights and Director of the US Copyright Office (pictured, source: Wikimedia Commons), and the date and time of the lecture as Tuesday 18 October 2022 at 6.15pm AEST. The lecture will take place at the Melbourne Law School, and will also be streamed online.
Save the date for now. I will update this page with further details as they become available.
UPDATE: The title of Register Perlmutter's presentation has been announced as Art and Authorship: From Warhol to the Creativity Machine. Registration is now available via Eventbrite. The venue for in-person attendees will be the Woodward Conference Centre, Level 10, Melbourne Law School.
The outline of the lecture is as follows:
Pending copyright cases in the United States highlight complex issues of how art is created and adapted.
The U.S. Supreme Court is examining the application of the fair use doctrine to Andy Warhol’s silkscreen prints based on another artist’s photograph.
And the development of artificial intelligence capable of producing appealing works of music, visual art, and poetry is challenging traditional concepts of authorship, with test cases being brought in the United States and other jurisdictions around the world.
Register Perlmutter will discuss what is at stake in these cases, and their implications for copyright more broadly.
I am planning to attend, and look forward to the event, and to catching up in person with friends, colleagues and associates from the IP community.
Before You Go…
Thank you for reading this article to the end – I hope you enjoyed it, and found it useful. Almost every article I post here takes a few hours of my time to research and write, and I have never felt the need to ask for anything in return.
But now – for the first, and perhaps only, time – I am asking for a favour. If you are a patent attorney, examiner, or other professional who is experienced in reading and interpreting patent claims, I could really use your help with my PhD research. My project involves applying artificial intelligence to analyse patent claim scope systematically, with the goal of better understanding how different legal and regulatory choices influence the boundaries of patent protection. But I need data to train my models, and that is where you can potentially assist me. If every qualified person who reads this request could spare just a couple of hours over the next few weeks, I could gather all the data I need.
The task itself is straightforward and web-based – I am asking participants to compare pairs of patent claims and evaluate their relative scope, using an online application that I have designed and implemented over the past few months. No special knowledge is required beyond the ability to read and understand patent claims in technical fields with which you are familiar. You might even find it to be fun!
There is more information on the project website, at claimscopeproject.net. In particular, you can read:
- a detailed description of the study, its goals and benefits; and
- instructions for the use of the online claim comparison application.
Thank you for considering this request!
Mark Summerfield
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