Professors Bill Hennessey and Mary Wong recently participated in The Fourth International Conference on the Intellectual Property Protection of High Technology, held in Beijing, China. The conference, organized by Prof. Hennessey, Wang Bing of Tsinghua Law School (China), and Jane Clark of Gowlings, LLP (Canada) has been held biennially since 2001. Others from Pierce Law who have attended include Dean Hutson in 2001 and Professor Karen Hersey in 2003. Approximately 80 people attended the conference this year. Professor Wong believes that the smaller size allows for better discussions than some of the previous, much larger conferences she has attended, because there is time for people to do more than network. Professor Hennesseyspoke about issues relating to patent protection of software in 2001, 2005, and 2007, and research exceptions to patent protection in 2003. His talk this year was entitled "Recent Developments at the US Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit (CAFC) on Patentable Subject Matter". It focused on the issue of whether business methods need to be incorporated into a computer program or technological device to be patentable, and the fact that the CAFC is becoming stricter in its decisions about what constitutes patentable subject matter in light of several decisions overturned by the Supreme Court. Recent cases in evidence of the trend toward more restrictive definitions of patentable subject matter include In re Comiskey, In re Nuijten, and AT&T v. Microsoft.
Professor Wong's speech, "ISP 'Safe Harbors'" focused on protecting Internet Service Providers from liability for infringement of intellectual property rights (especially copyrights) by their users. Key issues are the lack of international uniformity in standards, lack of clarity about who is an ISP due to increased services offered by traditional ISPs and other organizations, and when ISPs should be liable for infringement of intellectual property rights by their users.