Browsing by Author "Shaver, Lea"

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    Access to Knowledge in Brazil: New Research on Intellectual Property, Innovation and Development
    (Bloomsbury Academic, 2010) Shaver, Lea
    Access to knowledge is a demand for democratic participation, for global inclusion and for economic justice. It is a reaction to the excessively restrictive international IP regime put in place over the last two decades, which seeks to reassert the public interest in a more balanced information policy. With sponsorship from the Ford Foundation, the Information Society Project at Yale Law School has embarked on a new series of access to knowledge research, in partnership with colleagues in Brazil, China, Egypt, Ethiopia, India, Russia and South Africa. The first book in this series, Access to Knowledge in Brazil, focuses on current issues in intellectual property, innovation and development policy from a Brazilian perspective. Each chapter is authored by scholars from the Fundação Getulio Vargas law schools in São Paolo and Rio de Janeiro and examines a policy area that significantly impacts access to knowledge in the country. These include: exceptions and limitations to copyright, free software and open business models, patent reform and access to medicines, and open innovation in the biotechnology sector.
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    Access to Knowledge in Egypt: New Research on Intellectual Property, Innovation and Development
    (Bloomsbury Academic, 2010) Shaver, Lea; Rizk, Nagla
    The conventional wisdom in Egypt examines the issue of intellectual property solely as a question of policing and enforcement. The high levels of protection indicated by the WTO Agreement on Trade Related Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights are unquestioningly assumed to be desirable. Policy debates - and all too often academic ones as well - focus only on the questions of how to more efficiently tighten IP protection and crack down on piracy. Yet a more critical examination is urgently needed, whereby IP law, policy, and practice are viewed from a development perspective, rather than from an enforcement perspective. This volume takes on this endeavor. It offers the first examination of IP issues in Egypt adopting a multidisciplinary bottom-up approach that aims at maximizing access and contribution to knowledge, and in turn, promoting development. Bringing rigorous empirical research to bear on unquestioned ideologies, the collaborating authors question the conventional wisdom that more IP protection is necessarily better for innovation and development.
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    Access to Knowledge in India
    (2011) Shaver, Lea
    This essay is a preview of the author's upcoming book Access to Knowledge in India: New Research on Intellectual Property, Innovation, and Development, an edited volume which contains contributionsfrom various scholars on the access to knowledge alongside development and trade. While the essay seeks to bring together views and insights gleaned from various chapters of the book, the author simultaneously pushes forward her argument concerning the role that courts have to play in toning down excessive intellectual property protection using the language of human rights. In particula, the author argues that constitutional law has the poten tial tofurther socioeconomic rights which are affected by intellectual property protection. The author feels that Indian constitutional litigation has taken the right step in this direction and is a model for courts in other jurisdictions as well as for international norm-setting.
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    Access to Knowledge in India: New Research on Intellectual Property, Innovation and Development
    (Bloomsbury Academic, 2011) Subramanian, Ramesh; Shaver, Lea
    This is the third volume in our Access to Knowledge series. India is a $1 trillion economy which nevertheless struggles with a very high poverty rate and very low access to knowledge for almost seventy percent of its population which lives in rural areas. This volume features four parts on current issues facing intellectual property, development policy (especially rural development policy) and associated innovation, from the Indian perspective. Each chapter is authored by scholars taking an interdisciplinary approach and affiliated to Indian or American universities and Indian think-tanks. Each examines a policy area that significantly impacts access to knowledge. These include information and communications technology for development; the Indian digital divide; networking rural areas; copyright and comparative business models in music; free and open source software; patent reform and access to medicines; the role of the Indian government in promoting access to knowledge internationally and domestically.
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    Advancing Faculty Diversity Through Self-Directed Mentoring
    (2017) Dutton, Yvonne M.; Ryznar, Margaret; Shaver, Lea
    Mentoring is widely acknowledged to be important in career success, yet may be lacking for female and minority law professors, contributing to disparities in retention and promotion of diverse faculty. This Article presents the results of a unique diversity mentoring program conducted at one law school. Mentoring is often thought of as something directed by the mentor on behalf of the protégé. Our framework inverts that model, empowering diverse faculty members to proactively cultivate their own networks of research mentors. The studied intervention consisted of modest programming on mentorship, along with supplemental travel funds to focus specifically on travel for the purpose of cultivating mentors beyond one’s own institution. Participants were responsible for setting their own mentorship goals, approaching mentors and arranging meetings, and reporting annually on their activities and progress. Both quantitative and qualitative evidence demonstrate that the program has been effective along its measurable goals in its first year. Participants report growing their networks of mentors, receiving significant advice on research and the tenure process, and being sponsored for new opportunities. The authors conclude that this type of mentoring initiative, if more broadly applied, could have a significant impact on reducing disparities in retention and promotion in the legal academy. To facilitate such replication, the Article describes both the process of designing the program and the actual operation of the program as carried out at one school. In sum, the Article offers a concrete starting point for discussions at any law school interested in advancing faculty diversity through improved mentoring.
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    Brief of Amici Curiae 56 Professors of Law and Economics in Support of Petition of Writ of Certiorari, TC Heartland LLC v. Kraft Foods Brands Group LLC, No. 16341, (U.S. Oct. 17, 2016)
    (Counsel Press, 2016) Allison, John; Bagley, Margo; Bessen, James; Bock, Jeremy; Brean, Daniel; Carrier, Michael; Carroll, Michael; Chao, Bernard; Chiang, Tun-Jen; Chien, Colleen; Chin, Andrew; Cook-Deegan, Robert; Dreyfuss, Rochelle; Ernst, Dieter; Ernst, Samuel; Feldman, Robin; Fleming, Lee; Frye, Brian; Gallagher, William; Ghosh, Shubha; Goldman, Eric; Hall, Bronwyn; Heled, Yaniv; Helmers, Christian; Henkel, Joachim; Helper, Susan; Holbrook, Tim; Hovenkamp, Herbert; Hubbard, William; Jaravel, Xavier; Karjala, Dennis; Lee, Peter; Lemley, Mark; Levine, David; Lichtman, Doug; Liebesman, Yvette; Lobel, Orly; Love, Brian; Malone, Phil; Meurer, Michael; Miller, Shawn; Mitchell, Matthew; Montgomery, Susan; Pager, Sean; Rai, Arti; Rooksby, Jacob; Roig, Jorge; Sag, Matthew; Samuelson, Pamela; Rutschman, Ana; Shaver, Lea; Takenaka, Toshiko; Turner, John; Urban, Jennifer; Hippel, Eric
    28 U.S.C. § 1400(b) provides that a defendant in a patent case may be sued where the defendant is incorporated or has a regular and established place of business and has infringed the patent. This Court made clear in Fourco Glass Co. v. Transmirra Prods. Corp., 353 U.S. 222, 223 (1957), that those were the only permissible venues for a patent case. But the Federal Circuit has rejected Fourco and the plain meaning of § 1400(b), instead permitting a patent plaintiff to file suit against a defendant anywhere there is personal jurisdiction over that defendant. The result has been rampant forum shopping, particularly by patent trolls. 44% of 2015 patent lawsuits were filed in a single district: the Eastern District of Texas, a forum with plaintiff-friendly rules and practices, and where few of the defendants are incorporated or have established places of business. And an estimated 86% of 2015 patent cases were filed somewhere other than the jurisdictions specified in the statute. Colleen V. Chien & Michael Risch, Recalibrating Patent Venue, Santa Clara Univ. Legal Studies Research Paper No. 10-1 (Sept. 1, 2016), Table 3. This Court should grant certiorari to review the meaning of 28 U.S.C. § 1400(b) because the Federal Circuit’s dubious interpretation of the statute plays an outsized and detrimental role, both legally and economically, in the patent system.
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    Copyright and Inequality
    (2014-12) Shaver, Lea
    The standard theory of copyright law imagines a marketplace efficiently serving up new works to an undifferentiated world of consumers. Yet the reality is that all consumers are not equal. Class and culture combine to explain who wins, and who loses, from copyright protection. Along the dimension of class, the inequality insight reminds us just because new works are created does not mean that most people can afford them, and calls for new attention to problems of affordability. Copyright protection inflates the price of books, with implications for distributive justice, democratic culture, and economic efficiency. Along the dimension of culture, the inequality insight points out that it is not enough for copyright theory to speak generally of new works; it matters crucially what languages those works are being created in. Copyright protection is likely to be an ineffective incentive system for the production of works in “neglected languages” spoken predominantly by poor people. This Article highlights and explores these relationships between copyright and social inequality, offering a new perspective on what is at stake in debates over copyright reform.
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    Defining and Measuring A2K: A Blueprint for an Index of Access to Knowledge
    (I/S: A Journal of Law and Policy for the Information Society, 2008) Shaver, Lea
    Access to knowledge (A2K) is increasingly recognized as the central human development issue of our time. Yet to date there has been little literature defining precisely what is meant by this term, much less how to evaluate the progress toward achieving it. To help bridge this gap, this article offers a blueprint for an A2K index: a quantitative tool integrating a variety of data points to assess how well countries promote access to knowledge. The proposed index tracks five key dimensions of access to knowledge: education for informational literacy, access to the global knowledge commons, access to knowledge goods, an enabling legal framework, and effective innovation systems. The resulting conceptual map offers a concrete introduction to the A2K framework for information scholars and professionals.
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    Egypt's Obligation to Respect, Protect and Fulfill the Right to Access to Knowledge, Science, Art and Culture (ICESCR Article 15)
    (2013-05-14) Shaver, Lea; Caparas, Perfecto "Boyet"
    Submitted to the United Nations Committee on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights, Pre-Sessional Working Group 51st Session, 21-24 May 2013, Geneva Switzerland, by the Indiana University Robert H. McKinney School of Law Pro Bono UN Human Rights Reporting Program. Team Members: Eslah Salah Alkathiri, LL.M. candidate; Dr. Mohamed Arafa, S.J.D.; J. Michael Blackwell, J.D. candidate; Ritu Chokshi, J.D. candidate; Sherif Mohamed Mansour, J.D. candidate; Deyana Fatme Unis, J.D. candidate; Qifan Wang, J.D. candidate. Faculty Advisers: Professor Lea Shaver, J.D. and Dr. Ian McIntosh, Ph.D. Founder, Head & Trainer: Perfecto `Boyet´ Caparas, A.B., LL.B., LL.M. American Law, LL.M. Human Rights (Honors); Graduate Studies Program Manager, Indiana University Robert H. McKinney School of Law, 530 W. New York Street, Indianapolis, Indiana USA. This human rights report includes the book titled Access to Knowledge in Egypt - New Research on Intellectual Property, Innovation and Development, edited by Nagla Rizk and Lea Shaver, Bloomsbury Academic, (CC) 2010 by Nagla Rizk, Lea Shaver and the contributors.
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    Ending Book Hunger: Access to Print Across Barriers of Class and Culture
    (Yale University Press, 2020) Shaver, Lea
    Worldwide, billions of people suffer from book hunger. For them, books are too few, too expensive, or do not even exist in their languages. This book argues that this is an educational crisis: the most reliable predictor of children's achievement is the size of their families' book collections. This book highlights innovative nonprofit solutions to expand access to print. First Book, for example, offers diverse books to teachers at bargain prices. Imagination Library mails picture books to support early literacy in book deserts. Worldreader promotes mobile reading in developing countries by turning phones into digital libraries. Pratham Books creates open access stories that anyone may freely copy, adapt, and translate. Can such efforts expand to bring books to the next billion would-be readers? The book reveals the powerful roles of copyright law and licensing, and sounds the clarion call for readers to contribute their own talents to the fight against book hunger.