Machines of Law and Intellectual Property as Legal Machinery

The 13^th Annual Workshop of the International Society for the History and Theory of Intellectual Property (ISHTIP) will be hosted by Center for Intellectual Property at the Department of Law, University of Gothenburg, Sweden.

Time:
Conference begins 20 June at 1pm and ends 22 June 2pm (CET). Full programme will be released 15 May

Venue:
Volvo Hall & Zoom

Address:
School of Business, Economics and Law
Vasagatan 1
405 30 Gothenburg
Sweden

The workshop will have a hybrid form, meaning we will cater for both physical and online participation.

We are going to be exploring themes connected to machines in and of law, specifically how law in general, and intellectual property law in particular, can be, and are, affected by machines and by machinic agencies. Machines and machinery resonate across the IP spectrum and across disciplines, from early modern innovations to the contemporary challenges of artificial intelligence. We have invited papers that explore historical and contemporary connotations that encourage disciplinary self-reflexivity and conversations. Interdisciplinary have been strongly encouraged, particularly with respect to:

• legal subjecthood e.g. technologically augmented human beings as well as non-human, less-than-human and more-than-human agencies;
• materialities e.g. legal classification, administration, properties;
• practices e.g. creative and scientific, information management, knowledge circulation, sharing; and
• conceptions of rights and domain e.g. IP Constitutionalism, private power etc.
• We invite participants to discuss how machines have influenced and challenged regulation over time. It could both be a matter of exploring contemporary challenges to law, speculative or artistic approaches or responses to machine regulation, as well as historical and theoretical discussions on the broad theme of law and machines.

The workshop will focus on:

• creation: e.g. automatic cultural production and invention
• immaterial labour: e.g. immaterial machinic production, decision making and creativity
• agency: e.g. machinic rights, responsibility and sustainability, artificial intelligence
• jurisdiction: e.g. decentralisation, territoriality, smart or technologically intensified spaces
• law as machine: e.g. systemic boundaries, ontologies of IP law, convergences of public and private regulation
• social engineering in the service of IP objectives: e.g. public goals and constitutionalism, dehumanisation of decision-making, trolls, bots, etc.

Programme (TBC in May)

Welcome!

Workshop Organising Committee: Merima Bruncevic; Matilda Arvidsson; Frantzeska Papadopoulou; Eva Hemmungs Wirtén; Kathy Bowrey; Gabriel Galvez-Behar; Fiona Macmillan; Isabella Alexander; Maurizio Borghi.