Art. I, sec. 8, cl. 8 of the Constitution reads: "Congress shall have Power To promote the Progress of Science and useful Arts by securing for limited Times to Authors and Inventors the exclusive Right to their respective Writings and Discoveries." The Clause is typically known as the Copyright Clause, the Patent Clause, or the Intellectual Property Clause, but the power granted to Congress encompasses more than just authority regarding patents and copyrights. A more accurate descriptor is the Science and Useful Arts Clause.
Legal historian Ed Walterscheid will discuss the Clause from an historical perspective, seeking to delineate which language of the Clause constitutes a grant of power to Congress, what the scope of the grant is, and what limitations, if any, exist on this congressional power. He will suggest that the copyright power of Congress is not nearly as plenary as Congress and the Solicitor General of the United States seem to believe it is.
Monday, January 27, 2003
12:15-1:30 pm
Moot Court Room
Stanford University Law School
Lunch will be provided
All Welcome
About the Speaker
Mr. Walterscheid is a legal historian specializing in the history of intellectual property law in the United States. He is an independent scholar who has written two books and numerous articles on the history of patent and copyright law in the United States. He has also published extensively on other aspects of law in the United States. His most recent book, published in 2002, is entitled The Nature of the Intellectual Property Clause: A Study in Historical Perspective. It provides a detailed historical analysis of how the Intellectual Property Clause has been interpreted from 1790 through 2000.
Mr. Walterscheid was employed for twenty-eight years at the University of California's Los Alamos National Laboratory, serving first as a patent attorney and later as Deputy Laboratory Counsel.