Past Symposia

2019 Symposium

Protecting the Public While Fostering Innovation and Entrepreneurship: First Principles for Optimal Regulation

A symposium hosted by the Center for Intellectual Property & Entrepreneurship and the Business, Entrepreneurship & Tax Law Review, with support from the Koch Foundation.

In this symposium, hosted by the Business, Entrepreneurship, and Tax Law Review, a distinguished group of panelists will consider both substantive principles for regulating effectively in particular areas (e.g., financial markets, telecommunications, prescription drugs, network technologies) and broader procedural questions about how regulations should be crafted.

This event is free and open to the public. This event has been approved for 4.8 hours of CLE credit in Missouri.

Keynote Address

Commissioner Hester Peirce of the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) delivered the keynote address. Drawing on Professor Thom Lambert’s recent book, How to Regulate: A Guide for Policymakers, Commissioner Peirce discussed the difficult issues the SEC faces in regulating “initial coin offerings” (ICOs) and the trading of cryptocurrency-based funds. Commissioner Peirce’s remarks have already garnered the attention of a number of cryptocurrency-focused news outlets, including CoinDesk, CoinTelegraph, and UK-based MondoVisione. Her speech has been published in full in BETR’s Spring 2020 publication, and can be found at 3 Bus. Entrepreneurship & Tax L. Rev. 267.

2018 Symposium

Innovation in Media and Entertainment Law

Location

All events were held in Hulston Hall on the University of Missouri campus.

Symposium Program

Featured Speakers included Jim Spencer, Founder of Newsy, and First Amendment  Expert, Dean Larissa Lidske  (among others). Our dynamic keynote speaker was Jim Spencer, Founder of Newsy. The event is sponsored by the law journal BETR (The Business Entrepreneurship and Tax Law Review) and CIPE (The Center for Intellectual Property & Entrepreneurship).

BETR Symp Flyer 2018 Final PDF1

2017 Symposium

Implementing and Interpreting the Defend Trade Secrets Act of 2016

2017 CIPE/BETR Symposium

 Overview

Trade Secrecy

With its common law origin, trade secrecy has long been an integral layer of intellectual property protection. Trade secrets are broadly defined as confidential business information whose secrecy provides an operator with economic advantage. These may include technological information that overlaps with patent rights such as manufacturing techniques or software code, but trade secret protections also extend to pure business information such as customer lists and proft margin information that are not protectable under other IP regimes. The use of “improper” means to uncover another’s trade secret is ordinarily deemed an actionable misappropriation under both civil and criminal law. Most trade secret cases involve situations where an employee has left to join (or found) a competitor. Those cases draw in employment and contract law issues and challenge the fundamental nature of a competitive market.

 Defend Trade Secrets Act

In 2016, a bipartisan majority of Congress enacted the Defend Trade Secrets Act (DTSA) that provides for a federal civil cause of action for trade secret misappropriation as an additional layer to the individual state rights already in existence, as well as for a new seizure order mechanism. Many factors remain unclear. How does the new law integrate with other state law doctrines after considering the federal supremacy clause of the U.S. Constitution; how will the seizure orders be implemented; while overlapping, are the federal trade secret rights distinct from state rights; can the federal trade secrecy rights also protect individual privacy?

Location

All events were held in Hulston Hall on the University of Missouri campus.

Symposium Program

Featured Speakers included Berkeley Law Professor Peter Menell and Trade Secrets Expert Mark Halligan (among others). Our dynamic keynote speaker was Professor Orly Lobel from the University of San Diego. Professor Lobel is the author of the great book Talent Wants to Be Free. The event is sponsored, in part, by our new journal BETR (The Business Entrepreneurship and Tax Law Review). The focus is partially on protecting information – but also employment law and competition issues that ensue.

March 10, 2017
8:25 a.m. Welcome
Continental breakfast will be provided
8:35 a.m. Panel One: Setting the Stage and Creating the Act

R. Mark Halligan
Partner
FisherBroyles
Chicago, Ill.

Dennis D. Crouch
Co-Director of the Center for Intellectual Property & Entrepreneurship
Associate Professor of Law
University of Missouri School of Law

10:05 a.m. Break
10:15 a.m. Panel Two: Domestic and International Impacts

Peter Menell
Koret Professor of Law
Co-Director of the Berkeley Center for Law & Technology
University of California, Berkeley School of Law

Yvette Joy Liebesman
Professor of Law
Saint Louis University School of Law

Robin Effron
Professor of Law
Co-Director of the Dennis J. Block Center for
the Study of International Business Law Brooklyn Law School

11:45 a.m. Lunch
Lunch will be provided
1:00 p.m. Keynote Address – Secrecy and Market Power: Aligning Trade Secret Law with Innovation and Competition in Contemporary Markets

Orly Lobel
Don Weckstein Professor of Labor and Employment Law
University of San Diego School of Law

About the Center for Intellectual Property & Entrepreneurship

The Center for Intellectual Property & Entrepreneurship at the University of Missouri School of Law promotes faculty symposia and scholarship in all areas involving law and innovation, and develops curricular and extracurricular programming to prepare law students to participate in entrepreneurial and innovation communities. The center also supports the law school’s Office of Career Development in identifying externships, summer positions and full-time jobs within the center’s focus area, and collaborates with campus and community members to generate resources that will increase and promote innovation and entrepreneurship. The center’s focus resides not just on intellectual property, business and finance, but on the intersection of science, technology, engineering and math (STEM) issues.The law school also offers an Entrepreneurship Legal Clinic, which represents early-state businesses and helps guide them past the legal barriers faced by many new ventures.