Public Hearing in Berkeley, California, to Focus on Intellectual Property

The Federal Trade Commission today announced the fifth and final hearing in a series exploring the evolving market for intellectual property. This hearing will be held May 4-5, 2009, on the campus of the University of California at Berkeley, in cooperation with the Berkeley Center for Law and Technology and the Berkeley Competition Policy Center. It will explore how markets for patents and technology operate in different industries, whether those markets operate efficiently, and how patent policy might be adjusted to respond to problems in those markets in order to better promote innovation and competition.

This hearing is part of an ongoing series examining changes in patent law, patent-related business models, and new learning about the operation of markets for IP and technology since the October 2003 Commission report on the patent system, “To Promote Innovation: The Proper Balance of Competition and Patent Law and Policy.”