Peter K. Yu, Kern Family Chair in Intellectual Property Law and the director of the Intellectual Property Law Center at Drake Law School, submitted a position paper to the Hong Kong government in November. The paper was developed with the assistance of three Drake Law students: Timothy Alberts, La’Cee Groetken, and Kyle Mendenhall.
“Digital Copyright and the Parody Exception in Hong Kong: Accommodating the Needs and Interests of Internet Users,” was written in response to the government’s recent public consultation on the treatment of parody under the copyright regime. The paper, which was commissioned by the Journalism and Media Studies Centre at the University of Hong Kong, is available at ssrn.com/abstract=2349007.
Alberts, Groetken, and Mendenhall are all students completing the Certificate in Global Intellectual Property Law at Drake Law School. The research they conducted for the position paper ranged from analysis of case law, statutes, and international treaties to the examination of legislative proposals in the United States, Canada and other locations abroad.
“Training practical lawyers has been a longstanding hallmark of Drake Law School,” says Yu who directs the newly-established certificate program. “The project is important to our students in two ways. First, it allows them to put into practice what they have learned in the classroom. Second, students develop a global perspective that is increasingly important in a transnational business environment. The knowledge they acquire will also be highly relevant here, to the ongoing Congressional debates on digital copyright reform.”
In addition to providing a comprehensive analysis of strengths and weaknesses in the three options identified by the government, the position paper advances a fourth unidentified option concerning a copyright exception for predominantly non-commercial user-generated content. The proposal for this exception is modeled after the transformative use doctrine in U.S. copyright law and a newly adopted exception for non-commercial user-generated content in Canada.
Since its inception in fall 2007, the Drake Intellectual Property Law Center has served as an international hub for research and education in the intellectual property area. Earlier this year, peer surveys conducted by U.S. News and World Report ranked the Center among the top 15 intellectual property law programs in the United States and one of the top three programs in the Midwest. Most recently, the Center launched the LL.M./M.J. Program in Global Intellectual Property Law, a unique graduate law program that aims to train transnational intellectual property lawyers and professionals.
For more information, contact Peter Yu at peter.yu@drake.edu.