On August 18, Professor Peter K. Yu, the director of the Center for Law and Intellectual Property at Texas A&M University School of Law, delivered a keynote address at the Workshop on Private International Law and Intellectual Property at the University of New South Wales (UNSW) Faculty of Law in Sydney, Australia.
Held the weekend before the 2018 biennial meeting of the prestigious International Law Association (ILA) in Sydney, the global workshop brought together leading scholars researching at the intersection of intellectual property and conflict of laws. Yu's keynote address, "The Comparative Lessons of Itar-Tass Russian News Agency v. Russian Kurier," will be published as a book chapter forthcoming from Cambridge University Press.
While on the UNSW campus, Yu presented a paper on "The U.S.-China TRIPS Dispute: Episode II" at the 2018 Asia WTO Research Network Conference. This new paper examines the World Trade Organization complaint the United States recently filed against China over the violations of the Agreement on Trade-Related Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights. The paper further assesses the strengths and weaknesses of the U.S. complaint.
Yu was also featured at a roundtable organized by the China International Business and Economic Law Initiative (CIBEL) at the UNSW Faculty of Law. This roundtable is titled "Globalisation at the Crossroads: Legal Issues in China's Trade/Investment with the US, the EU, and Japan." Joining Yu on the roundtable were Professor Ichiro Araki of Yokohama National University in Japan, who is currently a panelist for a WTO dispute, and Professor Karsten Nowrot of Hamburg University in Germany.
"With trade tensions escalating between China and the United States, our role as academics has never been more important," said Yu. "I welcome these opportunities to share my views and latest research with colleagues in Australia and other parts of the world. This valuable experience will not only enrich my research but will also enable me to bring new ideas and insights into the classroom."
Yu holds a joint appointment at the School of Law and the Department of Communication at Texas A&M University. He is a preeminent expert on Chinese intellectual property law and policy. He testified before the U.S. International Trade Commission on intellectual property protection and enforcement in China. He has also spoken on intellectual property issues at the National Academy of Sciences, the U.S. Library of Congress and the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office.
Yu represents American Branch at 2018 ILA Biennial Meeting
Apart from academic events, Yu represented the American Branch of the ILA at the 2018 biennial meeting in Sydney. Founded in Brussels in 1873 and currently headquartered in London, the ILA is the preeminent international non-governmental organization involved in developing and restating international law. The organization has 60 branches and over 4000 members.
Yu serves as the co-director of studies of the American Branch of the ILA and co-chairs the branch's Committee on International Intellectual Property. For more than a decade, he has sat on the branch's board of directors (and its previously-named executive committee). He is also one of the four elected, U.S. members of the ILA Committee on Intellectual Property and Private International Law, along with Professors Rochelle Dreyfuss (NYU), Jane Ginsburg (Columbia) and Marketa Trimble (UNLV).
Working together with committee members from other ILA branches, Yu participated in the drafting of the ILA "Guidelines on Intellectual Property in Private International Law." It is anticipated that the fully-drafted guidelines, with relevant commentary, will be presented to the ILA membership for adoption at the 2020 biennial meeting in Kyoto, Japan.
On August 20, as part of the ILA biennial meeting in Sydney, Yu spoke at the open working session of the ILA Committee on Intellectual Property and Private International Law. The meeting was chaired by Judge Yuji Iwasawa of the International Court of Justice. Other presenters included Professor Toshiyuki Kono of Kyushu University (chair of the ILA committee); Professor Axel Metzger of Humboldt University of Berlin (the committee's co-rapporteur) and Professor Gyooho Lee of Chung-Ang University (representative of the Korean branch).
Yu's broad range of academic and policy research extends beyond intellectual property to cover international law, global trade, human rights and U.S.-China relations. Under his leadership, the intellectual property law program at Texas A&M University has been transformed into a leading international hub for research and education in the field. In the past two years, peer surveys conducted by U.S. News and World Report have ranked the program seventh in the nation.
About Texas A&M School of Law
Texas A&M School of Law is an American Bar Association-accredited institution located in downtown Fort Worth. In 2013, the law school acquired Texas Wesleyan University School of Law and has increased faculty and students exponentially in its five-year existence. The law school ranks highly nationwide in dispute resolution and intellectual property and offers 11 clinics that introduce students to real-world applications of the law. For more information, visit law.tamu.edu.
About Texas A&M University
Texas A&M, established in 1876 as the first public university in Texas, is one of the nation’s largest universities with more than 66,000 students and more than 440,000 living alumni residing in over 150 countries around the world. A tier-one university, Texas A&M holds the rare triple land-, sea- and space-grant designation. Research conducted at Texas A&M represented annual expenditures of more than $905.4 million in fiscal year 2017. Texas A&M’s research creates new knowledge that provides basic, fundamental and applied contributions resulting, in many cases, in economic benefits to the state, nation and world.