About the Conference

Conference Convener	:	Elizabeth Siew-Kuan NG, Director of Intellectual Property, Centre for Law & Business, NUS Law
Co-convener	:	Rochelle DREYFUSS, Co-Director of the Engelberg Center on Innovation Law and Policy, NYU Law School

This public conference is part of a research project that brings together leading scholars to consider how intellectual property law (IP) should be framed in the 21^st century. Adopting a multi-disciplinary approach, it will analyse how the IP framework is perceived through various lenses, namely, incentive, trade, development, culture and human rights.
It seeks, inter alia, to examine the following topics:

»	How well the incentive theory for intellectual property protection comports with reality? How would IP law look if other theories of innovation were considered?
»	How IP law should look to accommodate "IP's negative space" -intellectual property that is produced without intellectual property protection (IP without IP)?
»	How IP changes when it becomes a coin of trade, and whether IP laws are being shaped by bilateral and plurilateral trade deals?
»	Would further harmonization of substantive law be desirable (and achievable) in an increasingly integrated global marketplace, without further exacerbating the developmental gaps among the stakeholders to the international IP system?
»	How intellectual property rights can be balanced against norms of human rights, particularly in the areas of expressive and health interests?
»	How cultural resources should be framed within the IP paradigm, given that they are traditionally viewed as being shared in nature? Should culture be "propertized" (viz. converted to legal property)?

Whilst there have been studies on some of these individual frames, none have sought to integrate all of these fields. The IP law of the 21^st century must accommodate all of the framings that we consider above. Accordingly, the research papers will focus on how best to integrate these five distinct (and sometimes fragmented) themes as part of a forthcoming book project which will be co-edited by Professor Rochelle Dreyfuss and Associate Professor Elizabeth Siew-Kuan Ng.