The Pierce Law Review and the Social Justice Institute will be co-hosting a forum on the death penatly on Tuesday April 15 at 7:00pm in the Rich Room.  The panelists will include Pierce Law Professor Chris Johnson, as well as attorneys Peter Beeson, Renny Cushing, Barbara Keshen, Jon Kissinger, Alan Rogers, and Andru Volinsky.  The forum will be moderated by Ralph Jiminez of the Concord Monitor.

Dahlia Lithwick will be on campus Thursday to give the annual Judge Hugh H. Bownes Forum on Civil Rights lecture -- inclement weather earlier this winter (imagine that!) delayed the address until this week -- and we thought you'd enjoy reading a selection of some of her recent columns. A taste of what you might hear Thursday:

• Butt Out: A big gun case as a natural experiment in judicial restraint.

• Shades of Gray: Barack Obama has gotten past affirmative action. Have we?

• Yoo Talkin' to Me? Plausible deniability, and other reasons why warfare by midlevel legal memoranda is a really bad idea.

Dahlia Lithwick is senior editor and legal correspondent for Slate magazine, where she writes a column entitled “Supreme Court Dispatches.” Her work has appeared in The New York Times, The New Republic, Elle, the Ottawa Citizen, and the Washington Post. In 2001, she received the Online News Association’s award for online commentary. Before joining Slate, Lithwick worked for a family law firm in Reno, NV and clerked for Chief Judge Procter Hug of the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals. She holds a BA degree in English from Yale University and JD degree from Stanford Law School.

Please join the International Intellectual Property Organization in welcoming the Honorable Judge Jack Lu of the Massachusetts Judicial Conference's China Rule of Law program.  Judge Lu will be speaking TODAY from 12:00-1:00 in room 200.  All are welcomed for this fascinating discussion on building the rule of law in China.  For more information, contact the IIPO at IIPO@piercelaw.edu.

Cristina Galavis-Sucre's talk on Intellectual Property Legislation in the Andean Community was attended by approximately 25 people. The presentation discussed the basic governing structure of the Andean Community and the major IP laws of the Community.

The Andean Community is an international organization similar to a less-integrated version of the European Union. The governing document is the Cartagena Agreement. The major institutions are the Andean Presidential country, the Andean Council of Foreign Affairs, the Andean Parliament, the Andean Court of Justice, the Andean Commission, and the General Secretariat.

One of the most important IP laws of the Community is Decision 486, which mandates that all members treat other members' nationals at least as well as their own and at least as well as they treat the nationals of non-member countries when it comes to IP rights.

Other decisions covered during the presentation apply to specific types of IP rights. The basic principles of Andean Copyright law are largely similar to those of United States copyright law, but protect moral rights much more stringently and give performing artists a set of related rights rather than copyright protection. The Andean Community's has a first-to-file patent system which requires novelty, non-obviousness, and industrial application. Unlike in most industrialized nations, a prior description of an "invention" need not be published to establish a lack of novelty, because  many forms of traditional knowledge might not have been written down. Trademarks belong to the first person to register them. Someone who owns a well-known mark elsewhere in the world may oppose  a registration  which seeks to take advantage of its goodwill, but it is often faster and cheaper to reach an agreement with the registrant.

Bring your lunch to this brown bag talk by Cristina Galavis-Sucre (LLM '08) at 12:10 p.m in Room 200 on Tuesday (3/25). Snacks and refreshments will be served at this SBA-sponsored event.

Students met to discuss Pierce Law's proposed "romance policy" in a Student Bar Association-sponsored forum on Wednesday, Feb. 13. The policy would prohibit faculty or non-student employees from dating students, with certain exceptions for pre-existing relationships.

The policy is a personnel issue involving employees of the school, yet because it also impacts students, the forum was held to ensure students' opinions on the policy are included in the discussion.

Approximately 15-20 students attended the forum in addition to the SBA moderators. The biggest point of confusion about the policy was the belief that it is only intended to protect students. The moderators pointed out that the policy is intended to protect the school as a whole.

Rationales offered in favor of the policy were fairness and professionalism. While individual students might be willing to accept the risk of being graded unfairly, the mandatory B mean causes one student's grade to influence everyone else's grade as well. Attorneys in practice are generally prohibited from dating clients, so in the views of some, a policy barring romances between students and faculty or staff at Franklin Pierce is good preparation for the real world. 

The primary arguments against the policy were that it is overly broad, vague, or unnecesary. Some students who believed a prohibition on dating faculty was acceptable saw no point in prohibiting student-staff dating, arguing that there is a difference between getting an unfair grade and getting the wrong library book due to relationship fallout.

Both an offending student and the offending employee would be subject to disciplinary action under the proposed policy.

Opponents of the policy took issue with the potential for misconstruing innocent conduct and the lack of a clear definition of "relationship", suggesting there was the potential for abuse or inconsistent enforcement.  Others argued that current ethics policies cover these situations adequately, obviating the need for a romance policy.

 

 

The Licensing Executives Society presents a lecture on trademark licensing Thursday at noon in Room 203. Professor Karen Hersey will give a lecture entitled "Licensing Smart to Avoid Pitfalls." Refreshments will be provided.

Professor Hersey recently retired as Senior Counsel for Intellectual Property at Massachusetts Institute of Technology where she represented MIT's interests on intellectual property matters with a variety of constituencies, including industrial research partners and both U.S. and foreign governments. She publishes widely in the area of intellectual property law as it impacts institutions of higher education. Professor Hersey is a past president of the Association of University Technology Managers (AUTM). In addition to offering courses dealing with technology transfer for nonprofit organizations and intellectual property management in universities, she also teaches U.S. Copyright Law.

This is an SBA-sponsored event.