UC Berkeley Events - 2012 Podcasts

For many years, patent holders have made commitments to license patents that are necessary to practice a standard on reasonable, nondiscriminatory terms (RAND). The scope and content of that commitment is now being debated and tested in several forums, including US and foreign courts and regulatory bodies, the ITC, and the Standards Setting Organizations (SSOs) themselves. At this conference, economists and legal scholars joined practitioners from law firms and corporations to discuss these developments and the future of RAND, addressing such questions as: What is a RAND royalty and how should it be determined? Under what legal theories can the RAND obligation be enforced? Does a license offer have to be reasonable and non-discriminatory or does that requirement only apply to the negotiated result? Should injunctions or exclusion orders be available and, if so, under what circumstances? Are purchasers bound by prior RAND commitments? What reciprocal obligations are permitted? What is the proper role of SSOs and should their rules be updated? What should be the role of government regulators?

For many years, patent holders have made commitments to license patents that are necessary to practice a standard on reasonable, nondiscriminatory terms (RAND). The scope and content of that commitment is now being debated and tested in several forums, including US and foreign courts and regulatory bodies, the ITC, and the Standards Setting Organizations (SSOs) themselves. At this conference, economists and legal scholars joined practitioners from law firms and corporations to discuss these developments and the future of RAND, addressing such questions as: What is a RAND royalty and how should it be determined? Under what legal theories can the RAND obligation be enforced? Does a license offer have to be reasonable and non-discriminatory or does that requirement only apply to the negotiated result? Should injunctions or exclusion orders be available and, if so, under what circumstances? Are purchasers bound by prior RAND commitments? What reciprocal obligations are permitted? What is the proper role of SSOs and should their rules be updated? What should be the role of government regulators?

For many years, patent holders have made commitments to license patents that are necessary to practice a standard on reasonable, nondiscriminatory terms (RAND). The scope and content of that commitment is now being debated and tested in several forums, including US and foreign courts and regulatory bodies, the ITC, and the Standards Setting Organizations (SSOs) themselves. At this conference, economists and legal scholars joined practitioners from law firms and corporations to discuss these developments and the future of RAND, addressing such questions as: What is a RAND royalty and how should it be determined? Under what legal theories can the RAND obligation be enforced? Does a license offer have to be reasonable and non-discriminatory or does that requirement only apply to the negotiated result? Should injunctions or exclusion orders be available and, if so, under what circumstances? Are purchasers bound by prior RAND commitments? What reciprocal obligations are permitted? What is the proper role of SSOs and should their rules be updated? What should be the role of government regulators?

For many years, patent holders have made commitments to license patents that are necessary to practice a standard on reasonable, nondiscriminatory terms (RAND). The scope and content of that commitment is now being debated and tested in several forums, including US and foreign courts and regulatory bodies, the ITC, and the Standards Setting Organizations (SSOs) themselves. At this conference, economists and legal scholars joined practitioners from law firms and corporations to discuss these developments and the future of RAND, addressing such questions as: What is a RAND royalty and how should it be determined? Under what legal theories can the RAND obligation be enforced? Does a license offer have to be reasonable and non-discriminatory or does that requirement only apply to the negotiated result? Should injunctions or exclusion orders be available and, if so, under what circumstances? Are purchasers bound by prior RAND commitments? What reciprocal obligations are permitted? What is the proper role of SSOs and should their rules be updated? What should be the role of government regulators?

This roundtable discussion of Joseph Slaughter's Human Rights, Inc.: The World Novel, Narrative Form, and International Law brings the author into conversation with UC Berkeley faculty members Donna V. Jones (English), Robert Kaufman (Comparative Literature), and Kent Puckett (English). Alan Tansman (East Asian Languages and Cultures) moderated the event.

President Obama's Federal Trade Commission has taken an assertive posture in several areas of consumer law. The Commission has extracted record-setting fines for privacy violations, endorsed a Do-Not-Track mechanism for internet advertising, has brought lawsuits against marketers using false and unsubstantiated health claims, and has aggressively opposed pay for delay agreements where brand name drug manufacturers pay generic drug makers to not enter the marketplace. Professor David Vladeck (on leave from GULC), the Director of the Commission's consumer protection efforts, will discuss the agency's record in conversation with UC Berkeley's consumer protection and privacy experts: Professors Ted Mermin, Deirdre K. Mulligan, and Jennifer M. Urban (moderating).

Three distinguished Berkeley scholars discussed the history, growth, and future of America’s prison-industrial complex, and its relevance to Constitutional freedoms. Featured panelists: 1) Rebecca McLennan – Associate Professor of History, UC Berkeley. Author of The Crisis of Imprisonment: Protest, Politics, and the Making of the American Penal State, 1776 – 1941 (2008). 2) Jonathan Simon – Professor, UC Berkeley School of Law. Author of Mass Incarceration on Trial: Courts and the Future of American Prisons (forthcoming). 3) Frank Zimring – Professor, UC Berkeley School of Law. Author of The City That Became Safe: New York's Lessons for Urban Crime and Its Control (2011).

Presentation and discussion with Ashraf Zahedi and Amina Kator-Mubarez, co-editor and contributor to "Land of the Unconquerable: A Portrait of the Lives of Afghan Women" (UC Press, 2011). They discussed how to evaluate international efforts to empower women in Afghanistan and how to restore Afghan women’s voices to the design and implementation of gender reforms. Featured panelists: Amina Kator-Mubarez - Research Associate at the Program for Culture and Conflict Studies (CCS) at the Naval Postgraduate School, Monterey, CA Ashraf Zahedi, Ph.D. - Sociologist, human rights activist, and former scholar-in-residence at the Beatrice Bain Research Group, UC Berkeley

Designers of the first electronic telephone switches nicknamed them the "large immortal machines" because switches last decades. The 1994 Communications Assistance for Law Enforcement Act (CALEA) requires that all digital-switched telephone networks be built wiretap enabled; the law took longevity of switches into account by authorizing funding to update switches in place. But by failing to analyze how threat models would change in a highly connected IP-based world, CALEA did not consider the longevity of switches prospectively. As an architected security breach, CALEA compliance is a ticking time bomb. Alleviating this is the subject of this talk. Berkeley Center for Law & Technology: http://www.law.berkeley.edu/bclt.htm

The term “achievement gap” refers to the disparities in academic achievement between different groups of students. Across the United States, gaps in academic achievement persist between ethnic groups, socioeconomic classes, and genders. These achievement gaps are one of the most pressing education-policy challenges that schools currently face, and directly affect the future of our nation. How did these gaps originate, and how can we bridge them? Our four panelists discussed the history, causes, and possible solutions for the racial achievement gap in California K-12 schools, with an emphasis on literacy and the language arts. Featured panelists: * Carrie Donovan – Director of BUILD (Berkeley United in Literacy Development), UC Berkeley * Andrew Dubin – Professor, Graduate College of Education, San Francisco State University * Emma Fuentes – Professor, School of Education, University of San Francisco * Stephanie Sisk-Hilton – Professor, Graduate College of Education, San Francisco State University This program was co-sponsored by Writer-Coach Connection Berkeley and the University Library's Free Speech Movement Cafe Educational Programs Committee.

Personally Identifiable Information (PII) is one of the most central concepts in information privacy regulation, but there is no uniform definition of it. Moreover, the US and European Union approach this topic in different ways. Computer science has shown that PII and non-PII are not immutable categories. Hear Professors Paul Schwartz (Berkeley Center for Law & Technology) and Daniel Solove (GW Law) present their new paper “The PII Problem,” which discusses personally identifiable information and proposes a concept entitled "PII 2.0." A panel discussion moderated by Jules Cohen with Chris Calabrese, D. Reed Freeman, Jr and Maneesha Mithal follows.