Jane Ginsburg to Address the Rights of Authors in Copyright Law

August 07, 2008

Jane C. Ginsburg

The College of Law is pleased to announce that Professor Jane C. Ginsburg of Columbia University School of Law will present the first lecture in the law school’s 14th Annual Speaker Series. “The Author's Place in the Future of Copyright” will address the rights of authors in both traditional publishing and digital media.

According to Ginsburg, two encroachments — one long-standing, the other a product of the digital era — cramp the author’s place in copyright today. First, most authors lack bargaining power; the real economic actors in the copyright system have long been the publishers and other exploiters to whom authors cede their rights. Second, the advent of new technologies for creation and dissemination of works of authorship not only challenges traditional revenue models, but also calls into question whatever artistic control the author may retain over his or her work. Ginsburg will examine both prongs of the pincers and then suggest reasons to be optimistic about the future.

Ginsburg’s lecture will be held Wednesday, Sept. 10, 2008, at 4 p.m. in the Great Hall (room 201) of the Truman Wesley Collins Legal Center. A reception will immediately follow the lecture.

Willamette University College of Law welcomes your attendance at this free public event. For more information, call 503-370-6877 or send an e-mail to cstrum@willamette.edu.


Professor Jane C. Ginsburg
Ginsburg is the Morton L. Janklow Professor of Literary and Artistic Property Law at Columbia University School of Law and director of the Kernochan Center for Law, Media and the Arts. She teaches Legal Methods, Copyright Law and Trademarks Law and is the author or co-author of casebooks in all three subjects, including International Copyright and Neighbouring Rights: The Berne Convention and Beyond (Oxford University Press 2006), Trade Marks and Brands: An Interdisciplinary Critique (Cambridge University Press 2008), and Foundations of Intellectual Property (Foundation Press 2004). In addition, Ginsburg was a co-reporter for the American Law Institute Project on Intellectual Property: Principles Governing Jurisdiction, Choice of Law and Judgments in Transnational Disputes (2008).

Professor Ginsburg has taught French and U.S. copyright law and American legal methods and contracts law at the University of Paris, as well as other French universities. In 2004–05, she held the Arthur L. Goodhart Visiting Chair of Legal Science at the University of Cambridge. In 2009, she will be the Order of the Coif Distinguished Visitor. A graduate of the University of Chicago, she received her J.D. from Harvard Law School and a Diplôme d’Etudes Approfondies and a Doctorate of Law from the University of Paris II. She is an honorary fellow of Emmanuel College, University of Cambridge.