Innovation Law and Theory Workshop
Margaret Jane Radin
Professor of Law, University of Michigan Law School
Property and Contract Going Digital:
Old and New Puzzles about Theory and Practice
Date: Thursday November 1, 2007
Time: 12:30 p.m. - 2:00 p.m.
Place: Moot Court Room (Fl. 1048)
New varieties of contractual interaction in online transactions have called into question whether changes are needed in contract law (considered in the broader context of received principles of private ordering). Digitization makes possible more far-reaching standardization of terms than has occurred offline; but it also may enable more customization. Contracting is in the process of being automated; to what extent can the proverbial meeting of the minds be replaced by the handshake of computers? Mass-market contracts that waive or alter legislatively imposed intellectual property rights are being routinely promulgated by firms, and self-help in the form of technological protection measures in some instances operates as replacement for contract. To what extent does this call into question the role of the state in delineating rights and remedies? Can our traditional legal principles, rightly understood, govern the emerging practices online? Or is a deeper rethinking of principles now needed?
Margaret Jane Radin teaches Contracts, Internet Commerce, Patent, and other courses and seminars dealing with property theory, the interaction between property and contracts, and especially the evolution of property and contract in the digital era. She is the author of two books exploring the problems of propertization, Contested Commodities (Harvard University Press 1996) and Reinterpreting Property (Univ of Chicago Press 1993), as well as co-author of a casebook, Internet Commerce: the Emerging Legal Framework (Foundation Press 2d ed. 2005). Before joining the faculty of the University of Michigan Law School, Professor Radin taught at the University of Southern California and at Stanford University, and she has been a visiting professor at Harvard, UC Berkeley (Boalt Hall), and NYU. During 2006-07 Professor Radin was the inaugural Microsoft Fellow in Law and Public Affairs at Princeton University, where she developed a course in patent law and innovation policy for engineers and students of public policy. Professor Radin received her AB from Stanford, where she majored in music, and her M.F.A. in music history from Brandeis University. She was advanced to candidacy for the Ph.D. in musicology at UC Berkeley before she changed her career path to law and received her J.D. from the University of Southern California in 1976. She remains an avid amateur flutist.
RSVPs are appreciated: centre.ilp@utoronto.ca or 416-978-3724. A light lunch will be provided.
www.innovationlaw.org
Sponsored by the Microsoft Law and Information Society Project
