Call For Papers: Robotics and the Law Conference at Stanford Law School

CALL FOR PAPERS

Deadline for proposals: January 18, 2013

The program committee of We Robot: Getting Down To Business invites submissions from legal scholars and roboticists to the second annual conference on robotics and the law, scheduled to take place April 8-9, 2013 at Stanford Law School. 

Last year’s highly successful event at the University of Miami School of Law sought to set an initial agenda for the burgeoning field of robotics and the law.  This year’s focus is on the immediate commercial prospects of robotics. 

Developments over the past year—from the domestic use of drones, to driverless cars, to telepresence—have foreshadowed the impact of robotics on daily life.  We seek to generate theoretical and applied insights concerning the best policy and legal infrastructure to support or supervise this potentially transformative technology.  We invite contributions from all interested disciplines on or before January 18, 2013.

Topics Of Interest

The following list is by no means exhaustive, but rather meant as an elaboration on conference themes:

  • Legal and policy responses to likely effects of robotics on manufacturing or the environment
  • Perspectives on the interplay between legal frameworks and robotic software and hardware
  • Intellectual property issues raised by collaboration within robotics (or with robots)
  • Perspectives on collaboration between legal and technical communities
  • Tort law issues, including product liability, professional malpractice, and the calculation of damages
  • Administrative law issues, including FDA or FAA approval
  • Privacy law and privacy enhancing technologies
  • Comparative/international perspectives on robotics law
  • Issues of legal and economic policy, including tax, employment, and corporate governance

In addition to scholarly papers, we invite proposals for demos of cutting-edge commercial applications of robotics or recent technical research that speaks one way or another to the immediate commercial prospects of robots.

How To Submit Your Proposal

Please send proposals to cis@law.stanford.edu by January 18, 2013 consisting of the author’s CV and an abstract of no more than 3 pages.

Acceptance decisions will be communicated by February 18, 2013.

Full text of accepted papers will be due by March 29, 2013.  Papers will be posted online unless submitters seek an exception from the program committee.

Program Committee

Ryan Calo, University of Washington School of Law (Chair)

Michael Froomkin, University of Miami School of Law

Ian Kerr, University of Ottawa Faculty of Law

Dan Siciliano, Stanford Law School

Bill Smart, Oregon State University

Leila Takayama, Willow Garage

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