IAP 2017 Activities by Category - Law and Legal Issues

Danielle Byrdsong, MTA Associate Officer, Siri Nilsson, Technology Licensing Officer, Contracts

Jan/31

Tue

02:00PM-03:00PM

56-169

Enrollment: Unlimited: Advance sign-up required
Sign-up by 01/31

The transfer of materials into and out of MIT is steadily increasing each year. Moreover, the providers and recipients for these materials are diversifying.

Material Transfer Agreements (MTAs) are legal contracts that ensure all parties are permitted to send and receive biological materials, chemical compounds, and other materials. MTAs protect MIT’s intellectual property and freedom to publish, and MTAs record the terms and conditions for the use of the materials.

Come and join Danielle Byrdsong and Siri Nilsson to learn about MIT's Material Transfer process. Gain a better understanding of MTAs, MIT’s procedures and policies for MTAs, and how to get your materials expeditiously.

Please register by emailing kmkhalil@mit.edu   

Sponsor(s): Technology Licensing Office
Contact: Katrina Khalil, NE18-501, 617 253-6966, kmkhalil@mit.edu

Daniel Dardani

Jan/25

Wed

12:00PM-01:45PM

3-133, Pizza will be served

Enrollment: Unlimited: Advance sign-up required
Sign-up by 01/25

It has been said that content is king. 

Copyrighted works – whether media, software, or art – are a major portion of the world’s creative, intellectual, and economic output.   As such, copyright issues affect musicians, artists, authors, and software programmers alike.  This talk offers a fun and interesting look at the protection of your creative works of authorship whether developed in the lab at MIT or elsewhere.

Join Daniel Dardani, Technology Licensing Officer and intellectual property expert for an overview of copyright law, its history, practice, and relevance to your world and to the MIT community. 

Daniel will explore topics including: the nature of originality, Fair Use, open source, how copyrights can be licensed in the digital age, and others. All are welcomed. No prior knowledge about IP or the law is required.

This event is co-sponsored by the MIT Electrical Engineering & Computer Sciences (EECS) 

To register please email: kmkhalil@mit.edu

 

Sponsor(s): Technology Licensing Office, Electrical Engineering and Computer Science
Contact: Katrina Khalil, NE18-501, 617-253-6966, kmkhalil@mit.edu

Anne Graham, Civil & Environmental Engineering Librarian

Jan/23

Mon

10:30AM-12:00PM

4-163

Enrollment: Limited: Advance sign-up required
Sign-up by 01/23
Limited to 100 participants

Come and hear Jack Turner, Associate Director of the MIT Technology Licensing Office and patent attorney Sam Pasternak, discuss the ins and outs of obtaining patents. This popular session covers a bit of patent history and a lot about current practices, processes, and issues surrounding obtaining a patent; the focus is on the process used at MIT for ideas/inventions developed by the MIT community. A portion of the session is devoted to questions and answers. If you think you will ever invent something, you need to be here.

Register here

Sponsor(s): Libraries, Technology Licensing Office
Contact: Anne Graham, 10-500, 617 253-7744, GRAHAMA@MIT.EDU

Mark Porter '05, Certified Financial Planner

Jan/26

Thu

12:00PM-01:00PM

32-144

Enrollment: Unlimited: Advance sign-up required

Becoming a parent is a joyous and life altering event. It can also have a serious impact on your finances. How can you best protect your children? How can you best plan for their future? Come learn the essentials from Mark Porter '05, certified financial planner, and Brian Mahoney, Esq. on topics such as:

• Wills
• Emergency and Permanent Guardianship Provisions
• Trusts
• Education Savings Options
• Life Insurance
• Disability Insurance


The seminar itself will last 60 minutes and then Brian and Mark will be available for questions.

Register today!

Sponsor(s): Alumni Association
Contact: Elena Byrne, W98-206C, 617 252-1143, EBYRNE@MIT.EDU

Brian Mahoney, Esq., Mark Porter '05, Certified Financial Planner

Jan/10

Tue

04:00PM-05:00PM

32-144

Enrollment: Unlimited: Advance sign-up required

Becoming a parent is a joyous and life altering event. It can also have a serious impact on your finances. How can you best protect your children? How can you best plan for their future? Come learn the essentials from Mark Porter '05, certified financial planner, and Brian Mahoney, Esq. on topics such as:

• Wills
• Emergency and Permanent Guardianship Provisions
• Trusts
• Education Savings Options
• Life Insurance
• Disability Insurance


The seminar itself will last 60 minutes and then Brian and Mark will be available for questions.

Register today!

Sponsor(s): Alumni Association
Contact: Elena Byrne, W98, 617-252-1143, ebyrne@mit.edu

Dazza Greenwood, JD, Visiting Scientist, MIT Media Lab

Enrollment: By permission of instructors
Sign-up by 01/13
Limited to 40 participants
Attendance: Participants welcome at individual sessions
Prereq: N/A

This course provides a conceptual overview and hands-on projects for understanding and solving legal use cases with data analytics, blockchain and other cryptosystems and a special module on virtual reality for data vizualization. The course includes seminar style lecture/discussion sessions and hands-on, experiential learning through team projects. The course covers:

Legal Analytics, including 1) AI/Machine Learning for solving legal use cases; and 2) Using VR for data-driven visualization of complex financial relationships and legal contexts

Digital Assets, including: 1) Ownership rights, valuation and provenance of digital property; and 2) Storage and exchange of digital property with electronic contracts, automated transactions and autonomous agents

Digital Identity, including: 1) Technology and architecture for autonomy and control of self-sourced digital identity and personal data; and 2) Using individual identity for valid, verifiable login to apps or services and for providing legal acknowledgement, assent or authorization.

Digital Contracts, including 1) Integrating ordinary digital contracts and blockchain "smart contracts" in automated transactions by individuals or businesses; and 2) Standard open-web stack design patterns for executing multiple digital signatures and electronic notarization on digital legal contracts.

For more info and to apply, see: law.MIT.edu/Computational-Law-Course

Sponsor(s): Media Arts and Sciences
Contact: Dazza Greenwood, E15-449, 617.500.3644, DAZZA@MEDIA.MIT.EDU

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Learning and Workshop Sessions

Jan/23	Mon	02:00PM-06:00PM	E15-341, MIT Media L, Primarily Learning/Discussing
Jan/24	Tue	02:00PM-06:00PM	E15-341, MIT Media L, Primarily Building/Exploring
Jan/26	Thu	06:30PM-11:30PM	TBD, Bonus ABA Hackathon Session
Jan/30	Mon	02:00PM-06:00PM	E15-341, MIT Media L, Primarily Learning/Discussing
Jan/31	Tue	02:00PM-06:00PM	E15-341, MIT Media L, Primarily Building/Exploring

For more information, please see: law.MIT.edu/Computational-Law-Course

Note: The Dates/Times and Place are Subject to Change

Professor Jonathan Askin - Professor of law, Dazza Greenwood, JD - Visiting Scientist, MIT Media Lab

Everardo Ruiz SM '00, Energy Transition Partners

Feb/02

Thu

10:00AM-12:00PM

E62-223

Enrollment: Unlimited: Advance sign-up required

Cybersecurity continues a shift from Tolerance and Survivability tools towards Moving Target Defenses, but is this shift sufficient to create true cybersecurity?  As the number of malware attacks, cost and time-to-fix continue to escalate it is clear that cyber-attack advances outpace current Social Norms and policies. Increasing impacts on the U.S. and U.S. corporations underscore several Cybersecurity Myths. Cyber-defense strategy requires new Social Norms, similar to the European’s approach for the Plague, Slavery and Piracy for a global deterrence to today’s Malware, Botnets and Espionage. Should security move beyond compliance, monitoring and industry partnership-sharing of threat information? Can cyber policies address today’s challenges of misaligned incentives, information asymmetries and externalities? Is this simply a technology discussion?

Register for this free event.

Sponsor(s): Alumni Association
Contact: Elena Byrne, W98-206C, 617 252-1143, EBYRNE@MIT.EDU

Christopher Noble

Jan/11

Wed

02:00PM-03:30PM

3-133

Enrollment: Unlimited: Advance sign-up required
Sign-up by 01/11

You've invented something really cool. Can you get a patent?  Can you create a company around it?

Christopher Noble (MIT Technology Licensing Officer) will help you learn how and when to file a patent (and if you need to) and how your startup can spin the invention out from MIT and get that coveted “exclusive license”.

Christopher will also show you how the MIT Technology Licensing Office can help you; and will tell you what investors are looking for when they ask you:  “What about your IP?”

To register for this event please contact Katrina Khalil via email: kmkhalil@mit.edu

Sponsor(s): Technology Licensing Office
Contact: Katrina Khalil, NE18-501, 617-253-6966, kmkhalil@mit.edu

Piotr Mitros, Chief Scientist, edX

Jan/24

Tue

06:00PM-07:30PM

1-150

Enrollment: Limited: Advance sign-up required
Sign-up by 01/17
Limited to 24 participants
Prereq: Basic understanding of copyrights, trademarks, and patents

A short seminar discussing intellectual property pitfalls that entrepreneurs at early-stage companies can fall into. The purpose of the course is not to teach IP law, but to give a few examples of issues that we have seen entrepreneurs run into in the past so that students have a better sense of what to look out for. The course is run by two MIT alumns, Anant Saraswat, a practicing IP litigator, and Piotr Mitros, a successful serial entrepreneur.

If you have specific things you'd like covered, please do email us in advance of the course, and we will try to accomodate if they are within our background. As a seminar-style course, we hope to see a good, free-ranging discussion, so bring your questions to the session as well.

As a prerequisite, you should know what patents, copyrights, trademarks, and trade secrets are. Students without this background may take a short (<1 hour) online course on the basics of IP law on edX, which we will release mid-January.

Sponsor(s): edX
Contact: Piotr Mitros, 617 324-9745, PMITROS@EDX.ORG

Andrew Sellars, Director, BU/MIT Technology & Cyberlaw Clinic

Jan/26	Thu	02:00PM-06:00PM	E15-341
Jan/27	Fri	02:00PM-06:00PM	E15-341

Enrollment: Unlimited: No advance sign-up
Attendance: Participants welcome at individual sessions
Prereq: None

Help us estimate our head count by signing up at
http://sites.bu.edu/tclc/iap2017

The Technology & Cyberlaw Clinic represents MIT and BU students who run
into legal issues with their academic and innovative work. Since the
clinic launched in September we’ve worked with dozens of students at MIT
with their legal issues, and in this class we’ll go over some common
legal issues that we see, and how you can navigate them to effectively
research, experiment, publish, and share your work.

Some of the issues we’ll go over include:

* intellectual property
* hacking laws
* data privacy
* FOIA and public records
* academic freedom and the law

We’ll also solicit other topics from the group. Discussions and
presentations will be lead by the student attorneys in the Technology &
Cyberlaw Clinic, as well as the clinic’s director, Andy Sellars, who
previously co-taught IAP classes on reverse engineering and coders' rights.

Sponsor(s): Electrical Engineering and Computer Science
Contact: Andrew Sellars, sellars@bu.edu

Stephen M. Hou (Course 6 alum), Chih-Yun (Steve) Wu, Julian G. Pymento, Ryan Hyunjong Jin

Jan/20	Fri	02:00PM-06:00PM	32-124
Jan/21	Sat	02:00PM-06:00PM	32-124

Enrollment: Limited: Advance sign-up required
Attendance: Participants welcome at individual sessions

Sign-up URL: https://goo.gl/forms/r7Km1xmLMzJSe8ej1

Patent protection for inventions is a valuable component of business strategy for startups and established companies. This workshop covers the basics of U.S. patent law, including the patent application process, prosecution, litigation, and licensing. Undergraduates, graduate students, and post-docs in science, engineering, and business are welcome. We will discuss what recent developments in patent law mean for inventors, and draw examples ranging from the computer software to the pharmaceutical industries.

Some questions we will explore:
• What is the difference between a patent and a trade secret?
• Which inventions are patentable?
• What are the "novelty" & "non-obviousness" standards for patentability?
• Why am I an author on the paper, but not listed as an inventor on the patent?
• What if I want a patent, but my co-inventor doesn't (or is deceased)?
• What should I do if my patent application is rejected?
• If someone is practicing my patent without my permission, how can I stop them?
• If I am accused of patent infringement, what recourse do I have?
• What questions should I ask my patent attorney?

The instructors collectively have patent experience at eight
different law firms in Boston, Los Angeles, New York, Palo Alto, San
Francisco & Washington DC; hold twelve degrees in physics, engineering &
business from MIT, NYU, Princeton, UIUC & UC Berkeley; all are pursuing law
degrees from NYU

 

Sponsor(s): Electrical Engineering and Computer Science, Graduate Student Council, Martin Trust Center for MIT Entrepreneurship
Contact: Stephen M. Hou, stephenhou@alum.mit.edu

Jeffrey A. Meldman, Senior Lecturer

Jan/18	Wed	02:00PM-04:00PM	E51-151
Jan/20	Fri	02:00PM-04:00PM	E51-151
Jan/23	Mon	02:00PM-04:00PM	E51-151
Jan/25	Wed	02:00PM-04:00PM	E51-151
Jan/27	Fri	02:00PM-04:00PM	E51-151
Jan/30	Mon	02:00PM-04:00PM	E51-151
Feb/01	Wed	02:00PM-04:00PM	E51-151

Enrollment: Unlimited: No advance sign-up
Attendance: Repeating event, participants welcome at any session
Prereq: None

Intensive introduction to the basic provisions of U.S. patent law, emphasizing the requirements for patentability and the process of applying for a patent.  Designed for students in all MIT departments.

Topics include:  Requirements of utility, novelty, and non-obviousness; Eligibility of software, business methods, and genetic material; Applying for a patent, including patent searches and the language of patent claims; New U.S. law of inventor priority; Infringement, defenses, and remedies; Comparing patent protection with the protection of copyrights, trade secrets, and trademarks.

Reading materials include key sections of the U.S. patent statute (Title 35, U.S. Code) and related judicial decisions.  All readings and lecture slides will be posted on Stellar. No textbooks or course packs.

Meets with 15.S51, which offers 3 units of G credit.  Students who wish to receive credit should register for 15.S51 and plan to take a comprehensive quiz in the final class meeting on February 1.  (For the benefit of non-credit participants, the MIT community will have access to the 15.S51 website throughout IAP.)

Sponsor(s): Sloan School of Management
Contact: Jeffrey Meldman, E62-317, 617 253-4932, JMELDMAN@MIT.EDU

Cameron Kerry, Visiting Scholar, Omer Tene, VP of Research & Education, Int'l Ass'n of Privacy Professio

Enrollment: Limited: Advance sign-up required
Sign-up by 01/04
Limited to 30 participants
Attendance: Attendance at all sessions strongly recommended
Prereq: None

Increases in the power and granularity of data science present new challenges to privacy, as it becomes possible to identify individuals and their behavior in novel ways.  Data sets containing information about individuals have become the raw material for research and analytics by businesses, governments, and scientists.

Data collection and analysis that does not anticipate privacy issues carefully can provoke trouble, as controversies ranging from government bulk surveillance to Facebook’s testing of subscriber moods demonstrate. This course will look at the issues of privacy and data science within a social and legal context and survey the complex grid of legal structures and institutions that govern privacy at state, national, and international levels. Students will critically analyze and discuss real-world privacy problems and explore information security and data management issues in the context of data science. 

The course will meet in four two-hour sessions during the weeks of January 9 and January 16.  The format will be a combination of lecture and dialogue between the teachers, along with student participation in Socratic dialogue and case studies or problems.  A major component is the suggested readings that provide an introduction both to basic concepts in privacy and current issues.

Contact: Cameron Kerry, E15-384A, 617-710-2719, CKERRY@MEDIA.MIT.EDU

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The Right to Privacy: History, Culture,

Jan/09

Mon

02:00PM-04:00PM

15-359

The first session will look at the roots of privacy in culture, philosophy, anthropology, and political theory to address what privacy means and why it matters to people.

Cameron Kerry - Visiting Scholar, Omer Tene - VP of Research & Education, Int'l Ass'n of Privacy Professio

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Law and policy overview

Jan/10

Tue

02:00PM-04:00PM

15-359

Session Two will provide an overview of the two main systems of regulation of privacy and data protection: the United States and European Union.

Cameron Kerry - Visiting Scholar, Omer Tene - VP of Research & Education, Int'l Ass'n of Privacy Professio

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Applied problems I (Identity)

Jan/18

Wed

02:00PM-04:00PM

15-359

In the second week, the course will turn to current problems in privacy especially relevant to data science.  Session Three will look at the increasing ability to identify individuals through aggregation and correlation fo data, and what that means for the concept of "personal information" and de-identification.

Cameron Kerry - Visiting Scholar, Omer Tene - VP of Research & Education, Int'l Ass'n of Privacy Professio

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Applied problems II: ethics & algorithms

Jan/19

Thu

02:00PM-04:00PM

15-359

Session Four will look at the emerging policy issues of big data, analytics, and algorithmic decisionmaking.

Cameron Kerry - Visiting Scholar, Omer Tene - VP of Research & Education, Int'l Ass'n of Privacy Professio

Katharine Dunn, Scholarly Communications Librarian, Courtney Crummett, Biosciences Librarian

Jan/19

Thu

11:00AM-12:00PM

14N-132 (DIRC)

Enrollment: Register here: http://libcal.mit.edu/event/2984875
Sign-up by 01/19
Limited to 30 participants

Many researchers promote and share their publications on sites like Twitter, Facebook, ResearchGate, or Academia.edu. Come to this IAP session to learn about how sharing on these sites relates to copyright and open access, as well as how the sites compare to institutional and subject repositories like DSpace@MIT or arXiv.

Register here: http://libcal.mit.edu/event/2984875 

Sponsor(s): Libraries
Contact: Katharine Dunn, 14E-210, 617 253-9879, KHDUNN@MIT.EDU

Joseph Weber, Professor of Accounting

Enrollment: Unlimited: No advance sign-up
Attendance: Participants must attend all sessions

This course intends to expose students to a broad range of tax issues students will encounter shortly after graduation as an entrepreneur or an employee. For a new employee, taxes are an important consideration in decisions regarding deductions and retirement savings (through employee and employer contributions such as 401k's IRAs, etc). Taxes also feature prominently in decisions with respect to stock option-based compensation. Also, tax related issues for U.S. taxpayers working overseas will be addressed. For the entrepreneur, taxes also influence a new business venture's choice of entity: Corporation, LLC, Partnership, Sole Proprietorship. Instructor: Howard Mandelcorn is a partner at the Hutchings Barsamian Mandelcorn LLP law firm in Wellesley, Massachusetts.

Sponsor(s): Sloan School of Management
Contact: Joseph Weber, E62-664, (617) 253-4310, jpweber@mi.edu

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Jan/25	Wed	01:00PM-04:00PM	E51-145
Jan/26	Thu	01:00PM-04:00PM	E51-145

Howard Mandelcorn - LL.M., Joseph Weber - Professor of Accounting

Everardo Ruiz SM '00, Intellectual Ventures, Rob Aronoff, SM '90

Feb/03

Fri

10:00AM-12:00PM

E62-223

Enrollment: Unlimited: Advance sign-up required

Product Innovation and invention surges ahead at rates unimaginable just a few decades ago.  With good reason inventors protect their intellectual property (IP) internationally with a variety of tools - patents, copyright, and trademarks.  But how should an inventor monetize the invention?  Form and build a startup?  Sell the invention?  License it?

The speakers will examine the basics of patents, copyright, and trademark and consider monetization – entrepreneurship by building a startup, outright sale, and out-licensing – as well as factors and recent trends affecting patent valuation.  The presentation is based on decades of VP, Director, and entrepreneurial experience in product development and intellectual property at Intellectual Ventures, Oracle, Alcatel, Texas Instruments, Kodak, Sun Microsystems, private law firms, and startups.

Leading the discussion:
Everardo Ruiz,  SM ’00  Ph.D.  (Managing Director, Energy Transition Partners)
Rob Aronoff, SM ’90  (Managing Director, Pluritas)
Sanjay Prasad, J.D.  (Managing Director, Prasad IP)

Register for this free event.

Sponsor(s): Alumni Association
Contact: Elena Byrne, W98-206C, 617 252-1143, EBYRNE@MIT.EDU

Leon Sandler, Executive Director

Jan/11

Wed

12:00PM-01:30PM

3-270

Enrollment: Limited: Advance sign-up required
Sign-up by 01/09
Limited to 100 participants

What legal steps do you need to take as you spin your technology out of MIT?  How do you divide the equity between founders?  When should you incorporate and in what form?  What contracts do you need to have in place?  How do you ensure the right legal protection as you proceed? What minefields should you avoid? 

Come and discuss these topics with a panel of legal experts and MIT entrepreneurs who have spun-out their Deshpande Center projects into companies. Lunch will be served.

To sign up, please register at https://goo.gl/forms/fBpEudy2FlwFyU8G2

Space is limited to the first 100 registrants.

 

Sponsor(s): Deshpande Center for Technological Innovation
Contact: Cory Harris, E70-1273, 617 253-0943, charri89@MIT.EDU

Herbert (Dick) Schulze '67

Jan/10

Tue

05:45PM-06:45PM

4-145

Enrollment: Limited: Advance sign-up required
Limited to 40 participants

UPOP Mentor, Herbert R. ("Dick") Schulze ’67 will present one of his informative and engaging explorations into the realm of patents.

Unreasonable Men, Unreasonable Patents

It’s been said that the reasonable man accommodates himself to the world whereas the unreasonable man demands that the world accommodate itself to him; all progress therefore depends on the unreasonable man. This talk will consider unreasonable men and women, past and present, and how they and their unreasonable patents progressed the world to where it is today.

Dick is a graduate of MIT in electrical engineering and the University of Chicago law school. He is licensed to practice law in California, Colorado, Nevada, and South Dakota, and before the U.S. Patent & Trademark Office. Following service as an Air Force JAG and as a law clerk, he engaged in a general law practice in San Diego before specializing in intellectual property matters. He was with Hewlett-Packard Co. then Agilent Technologies as Managing Counsel in Intellectual Property for 19 years. He later became Of Counsel to Holland & Hart in Reno and Special Counsel to Evergreen Valley Law Group of Bangalore, India.  Dick has two grown children and five grandchildren. When not practicing law, he can be found passionately pursuing his second profession as a snowboard instructor at Northstar California ski resort or cruising the twistiest roads of America on his Triumph Rocket 3.

To register: http://upop-portal.mit.edu/events/view/?id=902

 

Sponsor(s): Undergraduate Practice Opportunities Program -UPOP
Contact: Kate Moynihan, 1-123-B, 617 253-0041, KATEJM@MIT.EDU

Katharine Dunn, Scholarly Communications Librarian, Katie Zimmerman, Scholarly Communications & Licensing Librarian

Jan/31

Tue

12:00PM-01:00PM

14N-132 (DIRC)

Enrollment: Register here: http://libcal.mit.edu/event/2986581
Sign-up by 01/19
Limited to 25 participants

Directed at authors of journal articles, blogs, theses, and other scholarly writing, this session will help you assess whether using a particular image requires permission or can be used under "fair use," provide suggestions about how to find images already flagged for reuse, and touch upon good practices for citing images.

Presented by Katharine Dunn, Scholarly Communications Librarian, and Katie Zimmerman, Scholarly Communications & Licensing Librarian, from the Scholarly Communications & Collections Strategy department of the MIT Libraries.

Register here: http://libcal.mit.edu/event/2986581 

Sponsor(s): Libraries
Contact: Katharine Dunn, 14E-210, 617 253-9879, KHDUNN@MIT.EDU

Boston Immigration Attorney

Feb/02

Thu

12:00PM-02:00PM

32-123

Enrollment: Unlimited: No advance sign-up

Iandoli Desai & Cronin P.C., Boston Law Firm, specializing in immigration, will present a seminar focusing on rules regulating employment opportunities after graduation for international graduates.

Sponsor(s): International Students Office
Contact: Antoinette Browne, E18-219, x3-3795, ajames@mit.edu