The Commons | Faculty Focus
Photo: Lorin Granger
Faculty Notes
Bunyan S. Womble Professor of Law Jerome H. Reichman, a renowned and pathbreaking scholar of intellectual property law, was honored with a two-day conference at Harvard Law School in late September. Leading academics and policymakers from around the world, many of them his research partners and co-authors and editors, convened in Cambridge on Sept. 26 and 27 for “Innovation, Justice, and Globalization — A Celebration of J. H. Reichman.” The theme for the conference and its programming reflected the innovative and influential nature of Reichman’s scholarship, which has long focused on legal and policy strategies to resolve challenges arising from the grant of exclusive property rights foundational to intellectual property law, such as access to patent-protected essential medicines in developing countries. Dozens of scholars addressed discrete aspects of Reichman’s work during moderated sessions organized around seven themes: the economics of innovation and development; whether antitrust and competition law trust intellectual property law too much; the puzzles of overlapping and hybrid intellectual property rights; the World Trade Organization’s Agreement on Trade-Related Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights (TRIPS) and the role of intellectual property rights in developing countries; challenges facing the digital commons; non-voluntary licensing of pharmaceutical patents; and
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Duke Law Magazine • Fall 2019
property rights versus liability rules — theories and practical implications. Keynote addresses at the conference were delivered by Judge Guido Calabresi of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit and Yochai Benkler, the Berkman Professor of Entrepreneurial Legal Studies at Harvard Law. Reichman’s 10 books include: Governing Digitally Integrated Genetic Resources, Data, and Literature: Global Intellectual Property Strategies for a Redesigned Microbial Research Commons (Cambridge University Press, 2016, with Paul F. Uhlir and Tom Dedeurwaerdere), which examines how scientists share collections of microbes and related data to advance research in such areas as medicine, agriculture, and climate change, and how current systems for facilitating that transnational exchange can — and should — be improved; and International Public Goods and Transfer of Technology Under a Globalized Intellectual Property Regime (Cambridge University Press, 2005, editor with Keith Maskus), which emerged from his work addressing the problems that developing countries face in implementing TRIPS. The conference, organized as a surprise and dubbed “Jerryfest” by participants, also celebrated Reichman’s kindness and generosity towards students and fellow scholars alike. d
