This is an introduction to the 7-part series from The 20th Annual BCLT/BTLJ Symposium. The reports were written by Kevin Hickey, Microsoft Research Fellow, Berkeley Center for Law & Technology at Berkeley Law School.
A Report from the 20th Annual BCLT/BTLJ Symposium
On April 14 and 15, 2016, the Berkeley Center for Law & Technology (BCLT), in conjunction with the Berkeley Technology Law Journal (BTLJ) convened The 20th Annual BCLT/BTLJ Symposium. The conference focused on intellectual property protection for software, and bought together a tremendous group of leading experts from law firms, technology companies, and academia. Given the continuing impact of the Supreme Court’s decision in Alice Corp. v. CLS Bank, 134 S. Ct. 2347 (2014), the recent Federal Circuit decisions in Oracle v. Google, 750 F.3d 1339 (Fed. Cir. 2014) and Williamson v. Citrix, 792 F.3d 1339 (Fed. Cir. 2015), and the likely implementation of the Defend Trade Secrets Act of 2016 (DTSA), this year’s theme was extremely timely and stimulated a lively and sophisticated discussion.
In a series of posts, I will be summarizing some highlights from the conference. Readers interested in more detail on the proceedings should check out the conference website, which contains a number of helpful background resources and links to the slides from many of the presentations. In the coming months, BTLJ will be publishing articles by a number of the symposium’s presenters, so keep an eye on their website as well.
Read more on the BCLT/BTLJ Software IP Symposium
This report is written by Kevin Hickey, the Microsoft Research Fellow at the Berkeley Center for Law & Technology, UC Berkeley School of Law. Mr. Hickey’s scholarship on intellectual property law and innovation policy is available online at SSRN.