Does Canada have anything to learn from Europe?  This is the question posed by IP Osgoode’s international conference on European perspectives on copyright law chaired by Professor Giuseppina D’Agostino, an Associate Professor, and Founder and Director of IP Osgoode, the Intellectual Property Law and Technology Program at Osgoode Hall Law School of York University.

The conference titled, “Can Canada Learn Anything From Europe? European Perspectives on Copyright Law in the Information Era”, is taking place this Friday, October 21, 2011, at the Ottawa Convention Centre in Ottawa, Canada.

As it brings together an unprecedented line up of experts from Europe to speak on copyright issues that countries like Canada face, the timeliness of this conference is crystal clear.  It was only a few weeks ago, on September 29, 2011, that Minister of Canadian Heritage James Moore and Minister of Industry Christian Paradis announced the reintroduction of the Government of Canada's Copyright Modernization Act (Bill C-11).

Conference presenters include Justice Vittorio Ragonesi, a judge of the Supreme Court of Cassation of Italy, keynote speaker Prof. Dr. Silke von Lewinski of the Max Planck Institute for Intellectual Property and Competition Law, and Victor Nabhan, a Special Professor at the University of Nottingham and President and Chair of the Association Littéraire et Artistique Internationale (ALAI).  Prof. Nabhan assisted in organizing the conference and will be chairing one of its panel sessions.

This international copyright conference is the latest in a series of IP initiatives that D’Agostino has introduced at Osgoode in the past three years. In 2008, she launched IP Osgoode with the promise that the new program would “provide an independent and authoritative voice on intellectual property issues and broaden and enhance the relevant public policy debates and practices in Canada.”

For Osgoode, it is an opportunity to influence public policy right where it happens, in Ottawa, at the Ottawa Convention Centre mere steps away from Parliament in our nation’s capital.  “The conference is designed for a wide-ranging audience, from government to the academy, from stakeholder organizations to members of the public,” says Professor David Vaver, who is also involved in organizing the conference.  Professor Vaver, one of the world’s leading authorities on IP law, in 2009 returned to Osgoode from the University of Oxford to take up the post of Professor of Intellectual Property Law and to become a member of IP Osgoode.

IP Osgoode is taking its focus on technology seriously.  “All are welcome to attend.  The conference proceedings will also be webcast to Osgoode Hall Law School, to Stanford University (one of IP Osgoode’s research collaborators), and everywhere.  All you need is a computer and Internet connection,” D’Agostino explains.

Full-time faculty who are involved in organizing the conference include not only D’Agostino and Vaver, but also Professor Carys Craig and chairing the webcast at Osgoode is Professor Ikechi Mgbeoji, both IP Osgoode members.