Dr. Jessica Silbey, professor of law and Yanakakis Faculty Research Scholar at Boston University School of Law, will deliver the Law School’s Nies Lecture on Intellectual Property on Wednesday, April 6, at 5 p.m. in the Lubar Center at Eckstein Hall (1215 W. Michigan St.).
Silbey’s lecture, “Questions of Intellectual Property and Fundamental Values in the Digital Age,” will address how intellectual property law, originally envisioned in the Constitution as a regime to enable markets in intellectual goods, is becoming a framework through which to discuss essential sociopolitical issues. The result is to refigure the substance of the constitutional purpose of “progress” in terms demonstrating the urgent relationship of art and science with social justice today.
Registration is available online and goes through April 1.
At Boston University, Silbey teaches and writes in the areas of intellectual property, constitutional law, and law and the humanities. Her publications include “The Eureka Myth: Creators, Innovators and Everyday Intellectual Property” (Stanford University Press 2015). Before entering teaching, she served as a law clerk for Judge Robert E. Keeton (District of Massachusetts) and Judge Levin H. Campbell (1st Circuit) and practiced law at Foley Hoag in Boston. Silbey received her J.D. and a Ph.D. in comparative literature from the University of Michigan and a bachelor’s degree from Stanford University.
This annual lecture remembers the Honorable Helen Wilson Nies, who served as a judge of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit from 1982 until 1996 (chief judge 1990–94).