Silicon Valley’s Challenge to Intellectual Property Law

 

Ted Ullyot titled his Helen Wilson Nies Lecture at Marquette Law School on Tuesday, “Innovation, Disruption, and Intellectual Property: A View from Silicon Valley.” He made it clear which two of those three elements are looked on favorably within that bastion of high-tech culture: innovation and disruption. That leaves one not looked on so favorably: intellectual property law, if you define that as protecting creative work through patents, copyrights, or trademarks.

Ullyot has gained great insight into what goes on between technological visionaries on one side and corporate lawyers on the other. From 2008 to 2013, he was general counsel of Facebook. That covered a period in which Facebook grew at an amazing pace, its stock went public, and it was sued by Yahoo! for patent infringement. Ullyot described the Yahoo! case in detail in his lecture, including the way that many of the leading figures in Silicon Valley who had no connection to Facebook were rubbed wrong by the Yahoo! suit because the culture of innovation was so oriented against asserting intellectual property rights.

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NAAC Team Competes in Nationals

20160220_183458The National Appellate Advocacy Competition started with 193 teams. Six regional competitions later, only 24 advanced to the national competition in Chicago April 7-9. One team from Marquette was among those 24 teams.

Cassandra Van Gompel, Daniel Murphy, and Arial Rosenberg (in the above picture from left to right), all 3Ls, won the Brooklyn regional in February to earn their place at nationals. (Murphy also won best oralist at regionals.) The team argued two rounds on Thursday, April 7. Unfortunately, they did not advance to the next round. Each round they argued was very close; in their second round, they lost by less than one point to a team that made the final round.

Congratulations to the team for their outstanding representation of Marquette Law.

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Congratulations to the 2016 Jenkins Honors Moot Court Competition Finalists

Congratulations to this year’s Jenkins Honors Moot Court Competition finalists: Samuel Draver, Alan Mazzulla, Sara McNamara, and Amardeep Singh. All the semifinalists presented strong oral arguments.

Thank you to the semifinal round judges: Atty. Gil Cubia, Atty. Cathy LaFleur, Prof. Jonathan Koenig, Atty. Steve Meyer, Hon. Paul Reilly, and Atty. Jan Rhodes.

The final round will be held on April 13 at 6:00 p.m. in the Appellate Courtroom. The final round judges will be Hon. Diane Sykes, Hon. Brett Kavanaugh, and Hon. Gary Feinerman. The Law School community is cordially invited to attend the final round. Here is a link to rsvp for the event. The teams will be matched as follows:

Samuel Draver and Alan Mazzulla versus Sara McNamara and Amardeep Singh.

Best of luck to the finalists.

Continue ReadingCongratulations to the 2016 Jenkins Honors Moot Court Competition Finalists