Conference on Ownership of Employee Inventions

Monash University (Australia) will be hosting the conference Business Innovation: A Legal Balancing Act, May 2-4, 2011 at its branch campus in Prato, Tuscany, Italy.  Here's the conference description:

This conference was inspired by the issues that arose in recent litigation in the Australian Federal Court in University of Western Australia v Gray regarding ownership of employee inventions in a university. The themes for this international conference are the analysis of the topical issue of protecting business research and development in the context of several areas of law - IP, Labour and Employment, Competition and Corporate Laws. The sessions will evaluate the impact of each of these areas on this issue using discipline specific perspectives. They will also explore the extent to which such perspectives are influenced by the others and whether a more harmonized approach is necessary to provide appropriate protection. Approaches of the common law and civil jurisdictions, particularly the EU, will be used to inform and provide guidance to the analysis of emerging issues in this field.  The legal issues will be explored from theoretical and applied frameworks.

We anticipate this conference will attract legal practitioners, academics, postgraduate students, policy makers and those responsible for business innovation in both public and private research institutes.

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