Senior Research Fellow, Mercatus Center, George Mason University; Former General Counsel at the Federal Trade Commission (FTC)
Alden Abbott is a Senior Research Fellow at the Mercatus Center. Prior to joining Mercatus, he served as the General Counsel of the Federal Trade Commission (FTC). As the Commission’s chief legal officer and adviser, he represented the agency in court and provides legal counsel to the Commission and its bureaus and offices.
Prior to rejoining the FTC in April 2018, Mr. Abbott served in executive positions at the Heritage Foundation (2014-2018) and BlackBerry (2012-2014). He also held a variety of senior positions in the U.S. federal government (in the FTC, the Commerce Department, and the Justice Department's Office of Legal Counsel and the Antitrust Division).
He speaks French, Spanish, and Italian.
Professor of Law and Journalism, University of Florida
Professor Jane Bambauer is the Brechner Eminent Scholar at the Levin College of Law and at the College of Journalism and Communications. She teaches Torts, First Amendment, Media Law, Criminal Procedure, and Privacy Law.
Professor Bambauer’s research assesses the social costs and benefits of Big Data, AI, and predictive algorithms. Her work analyzes how the regulation of these new information technologies will affect free speech, privacy, law enforcement, health and safety, competitive markets, and government accountability. Professor Bambauer’s research has been featured in over 20 scholarly publications, including the Stanford Law Review, the Michigan Law Review, the California Law Review, and the Journal of Empirical Legal Studies. Her work has also been featured in media outlets, including the Washington Post, the New York Times, Fox News, and Lawfare, where she is a contributing editor.
Professor Bambauer currently serves as the Chair of the National AI Advisory Committee Subcommittee on Law Enforcement, and she has previously served as the deputy director of the Center for Quantum Networks, a multi-institutional engineering research center funded by the National Science Foundation. She holds a B.S. in Mathematics from Yale College and a J.D. from Yale Law School.
Senior Counsel for Law and Policy, Committee for Justice
Jeff is a registered patent attorney and an intellectual property and innovation policy professional with a unique combination of training and real-world experience. Jeff is also currently a PhD candidate at the University of Pittsburgh Graduate School of Public and International Affairs (GSPIA). His dissertation is entitled “An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of American Innovation: An Austrian Economics Perspective.”
Jeff maintains an active intellectual property law practice in the life sciences space. While counseling clients and working on his dissertation and other scholarship, Jeff remains active in the policy analysis and advocacy space. He currently serves as the President of the Association for American Innovation and a member and former Chair of the Public Policy Legal Task Force (PPLTF) for the Association of University of Technology Managers (AUTM).
Jeff has a bachelor’s degree chemical and biomedical engineering with concentrations in molecular biology and fermentation technology and from Carnegie Mellon. He also has a master’s degree in industrial administration (business) from Carnegie Mellon where he concentrated on international management, marketing and finance. He earned his law degree from the Duquesne University School of Law with a focus on intellectual property law.
Postgraduate Research Fellow, Mercatus Center, George Mason University
Satya Marar is a Research Fellow at the Mercatus Center at George Mason University where he was formerly an MA Fellow. He holds an MA in Economics from George Mason University and a BA in writing and an LLB with Honors in law from Macquarie University in Sydney, Australia. He is currently pursuing an LLM in US law at George Mason University. He has previously worked at Reason Foundation and the Australian Taxpayers’ Alliance. His research interests include antitrust & competition policy, intellectual property, trade and technology policy.
Associate Professor of Law & Dean’s Scholar in Intellectual Property, Texas Tech School of Law
Barbara Lauriat has taught and conducted research in most areas of intellectual property law, including copyright, patents, and trademarks; her work often takes a comparative approach, using examples from different national legal systems and drawing on legal history. Educated in the United States and the United Kingdom, she began her legal academic career in England, teaching intellectual property law to undergraduate, L.L.M., and Ph.D. students at King's College London from 2011-2022, after serving as the Career Development Fellow in Intellectual Property Law and a Fellow of St. Catherine's College at the University of Oxford from 2008-2010. She has previously held visiting positions as the Frank H. Marks Fellow in Intellectual Property Law at George Washington University Law School, a Faculty Fellow at the Notre Dame Institute for Advanced Study, a Faculty Associate at the Berkman Klein Center for the Internet & Society at Harvard University, a Faculty Research Fellow of the Oxford Intellectual Property Research Centre at the University of Oxford, a Scholar-in-Residence in the International Arbitration Department at WilmerHale London, a Visiting Senior Research Fellow at the New Zealand Centre for International Economic Law, a Hauser Global Research Fellow at New York University School of Law, and a Visiting Scholar at the University of British Columbia. She was appointed an Academic Fellow of the Honourable Society of the Inner Temple (2013-2016) and thereafter an Associate Academic Fellow. Lauriat won first prize in the International Association for the Advancement of Teaching and Research in Intellectual Property (ATRIP) Essay Competition in 2013 and was the winner of the Copyright Society of the U.S.A.'s Seton Award in 2015.
Lauriat earned her B.A. from Boston University and her J.D. from Boston's School of Law. She has also recieved her D.Phil at the University of Oxford. As a law student, Lauriat served as an editor on the BU Law Review and was later elected General Editor of the Oxford University Commonwealth Law Journal (2007/2008). She currently serves on the editorial board of Arbitration International.
Lauriat is a member of the Bars of Massachusetts and New Hampshire (inactive) and was Called to the Bar of England and Wales in 2018.
Professor of Law, University of San Diego School of Law
Lisa Ramsey is a Professor of Law at the University of San Diego School of Law, where she is a founding member of the Center for Intellectual Property Law and Markets. She teaches and writes in the intellectual property and international intellectual property law area and is an expert on trademark law. Professor Ramsey is an active member of the American Intellectual Property Law Association and has given presentations on trademark law to attorneys, professors, and students throughout the United States and around the world. Before joining the USD law faculty, she was an intellectual property litigator at Gray Cary Ware & Freidenrich and served as a judicial law clerk for the Honorable Rebecca Beach Smith in the United States District Court for the Eastern District of Virginia. Professor Ramsey’s scholarship focuses on potential conflicts between trademark laws and free speech rights, and explains how trademark protection of inherently valuable words, symbols, and product features can harm fair competition and freedom of expression.
Examples of Professor Ramsey’s publications include Protectable Trademark Subject Matter in Common Law Countries and the Problem with Flexibility in The Cambridge Handbook of International and Comparative Trademark Law (Irene Calboli & Jane Ginsburg eds., Cambridge University Press 2020); Using Failure to Function Doctrine to Protect Free Speech and Competition in Trademark Law in the Iowa Law Review Online (2020); Non-Traditional Trademarks and Inherently Valuable Expression in The Protection of Non-Traditional Trademarks (Irene Calboli & Martin Senftleben eds., Oxford University Press 2018); Free Speech Challenges to Trademark Law After Matal v. Tam in the Houston Law Review (2018); A Free Speech Right to Trademark Protection? in the Trademark Reporter (2016); and Free Speech and International Obligations to Protect Trademarks in the Yale Journal of International Law (2010). Her article Descriptive Trademarks and the First Amendment in the Tennessee Law Review (2003) was judged by the editor of the Intellectual Property Law Review to be one of the best intellectual property law articles of 2003.
Associate Professor, UNH Franklin Pierce School of Law
Zvi S. Rosen is an Associate Professor at UNH Franklin Pierce School of Law and the Faculty Director of the Franklin Pierce Society for Intellectual Property. He has served as a Assistant Professor at the Southern Illinois University School of Law, as a Visiting Assistant Professor at the Maurice A. Deane School of Law at Hofstra University, and as a Visiting Scholar and Professorial Lecturer in Law at George Washington University School of Law.
In 2015-2016, he was the Abraham L. Kaminstein Scholar in Residence at the U.S. Copyright Office. Mr. Rosen received his J.D. from Northwestern University School of Law in 2005 and LLM in Intellectual Property in 2006 from the George Washington University Law School. He has practiced at Fried, Frank, Harris, Shriver & Jacobson LLP as well as smaller firms and his own practice, and clerked for the Hon. Thomas B. Bennett of the U.S. Bankruptcy Court for the Northern District of Alabama. He has written extensively on the development of modern copyright and trademark law, as well as on bankruptcy law.
Thomas M. Siebel Senior Fellow, The Hoover Institution, Stanford University; Gary T. Schwartz Distinguished Professor of Law Emeritus, UCLA School of Law
Eugene Volokh is the Thomas M. Siebel Senior Fellow at the Hoover Institution (Stanford), as well as the Gary T. Schwartz Distinguished Professor of Law Emeritus and Distinguished Research Professor at UCLA School of Law. He recently retired from teaching at UCLA, after 30 years there, and is now focusing on research.
Volokh is the author of the textbooks The First Amendment and Related Statutes (8th ed. 2023), and Academic Legal Writing (5th ed. 2016), as well as over 100 academic law journal articles, mostly on First Amendment law. He is a member of The American Law Institute; the editor-in-chief of the Journal of Free Speech Law; and the creator and coauthor of The Volokh Conspiracy, a leading legal blog founded in 2002 (hosted at the Washington Post from 2014 to 2017 and now at Reason Magazine).
Understanding AI
Timothy Lee is a reporter who has written about technology, economics, and public policy for more than a decade. Before he launched Understanding AI, he wrote for the Washington Post, Vox.com, and Ars Technica. Lee has a master’s degree in computer science from Princeton.
Richard M. Sherman Distinguished Professor of Law Professor of School Information Co-Director, Berkeley Center for Law & Technology
Pamela Samuelson is the Richard M. Sherman Distinguished Professor of Law and Information at the University of California, Berkeley. She is recognized as a pioneer in digital copyright law, intellectual property, cyberlaw and information policy. Since 1996, she has held a joint appointment at Berkeley Law School and UC Berkeley’s School of Information. Samuelson is a director of the internationally-renowned Berkeley Center for Law & Technology. She is co-founder and chair of the board of Authors Alliance, a nonprofit organization that promotes the public interest in access to knowledge. She also serves on the board of directors of the Electronic Frontier Foundation, as well as on the advisory boards for the Electronic Privacy Information Center, the Center for Democracy & Technology, and Public Knowledge.
Samuelson began her legal career as an associate with Willkie Farr & Gallagher in New York. She began her career as a legal academic at the University of Pittsburgh School of Law, from which she visited at Columbia, Cornell, and Emory Law Schools. While on the Berkeley faculty, she has been a distinguished visiting professor at University of Toronto Law School as well as a visiting professor at the University of Melbourne and Harvard Law Schools. She was named an honorary professor at the University of Amsterdam in 2002.
Director of Innovation Policy, International Center for Law & Economics
Kristian Stout, ICLE’s Director of Innovation Policy is an expert in intellectual property, antitrust, telecommunications, and Internet governance. Kristian has been a Fellow at the Internet Law & Policy Foundry, as well as the Eagleton Institute of Politics. Before practicing law, Kristian worked as a technology entrepreneur and a lecturer in the Computer Science Department at Rutgers University. Kristian served on the board of the New Jersey Leadership Program, and wasthe Chair of the Asset Forfeiture Working Group for the NJ State Advisory Committee to the United States Commission on Civil Rights. He has previously served on the Broadband Deployment Advisory Committee for the Federal Communications Commission. Kristian graduated magna cum laude from the Rutgers University School of law, and served on the editorial board of the Rutgers Journal of Law and Public Policy.
Legal Fellow, Center for Constitutional Studies, Cato Institute
Brent Skorup is a legal fellow in the Cato Institute’s Robert A. Levy Center for Constitutional Studies.
Before joining Cato, he was a senior research fellow at the Mercatus Center at the George Mason University. His research areas include free speech, technology law, Fourth Amendment protections, regulation, and property law. Skorup has published pieces in economics and law journals and in popular media, including The Wall Street Journal, The New York Times, Bloomberg Law, Reuters, and Wired. He’s appeared as a TV and radio interview guest for news outlets like C‑SPAN, NPR, CBS News, ABC News, and CNBC Asia.
The Pennsylvania Supreme Court, a dissenting opinion at the Illinois Supreme Court, and the ALI's Restatement of the Law of Property have cited his legal research and he has testified as a technology and legal expert in legislative hearings in several states. Skorup has been appointed to several federal and state advisory bodies and he is currently a member of the Texas Advanced Air Mobility Advisory Committee.
Skorup has a BA in economics from Wheaton College and a law degree from the George Mason University School of Law, where he was articles editor for the Civil Rights Law Journal. He was a legal clerk at the FCC’s wireless bureau and Office of General Counsel and at the Energy and Commerce Committee in the U.S. House of Representatives.
Senior Research Fellow, Mercatus Center, George Mason University; Former General Counsel at the Federal Trade Commission (FTC)
Alden Abbott is a Senior Research Fellow at the Mercatus Center. Prior to joining Mercatus, he served as the General Counsel of the Federal Trade Commission (FTC). As the Commission’s chief legal officer and adviser, he represented the agency in court and provides legal counsel to the Commission and its bureaus and offices.
Prior to rejoining the FTC in April 2018, Mr. Abbott served in executive positions at the Heritage Foundation (2014-2018) and BlackBerry (2012-2014). He also held a variety of senior positions in the U.S. federal government (in the FTC, the Commerce Department, and the Justice Department's Office of Legal Counsel and the Antitrust Division).
He speaks French, Spanish, and Italian.
Professor of Law and Journalism, University of Florida
Professor Jane Bambauer is the Brechner Eminent Scholar at the Levin College of Law and at the College of Journalism and Communications. She teaches Torts, First Amendment, Media Law, Criminal Procedure, and Privacy Law.
Professor Bambauer’s research assesses the social costs and benefits of Big Data, AI, and predictive algorithms. Her work analyzes how the regulation of these new information technologies will affect free speech, privacy, law enforcement, health and safety, competitive markets, and government accountability. Professor Bambauer’s research has been featured in over 20 scholarly publications, including the Stanford Law Review, the Michigan Law Review, the California Law Review, and the Journal of Empirical Legal Studies. Her work has also been featured in media outlets, including the Washington Post, the New York Times, Fox News, and Lawfare, where she is a contributing editor.
Professor Bambauer currently serves as the Chair of the National AI Advisory Committee Subcommittee on Law Enforcement, and she has previously served as the deputy director of the Center for Quantum Networks, a multi-institutional engineering research center funded by the National Science Foundation. She holds a B.S. in Mathematics from Yale College and a J.D. from Yale Law School.
Senior Counsel for Law and Policy, Committee for Justice
Jeff is a registered patent attorney and an intellectual property and innovation policy professional with a unique combination of training and real-world experience. Jeff is also currently a PhD candidate at the University of Pittsburgh Graduate School of Public and International Affairs (GSPIA). His dissertation is entitled “An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of American Innovation: An Austrian Economics Perspective.”
Jeff maintains an active intellectual property law practice in the life sciences space. While counseling clients and working on his dissertation and other scholarship, Jeff remains active in the policy analysis and advocacy space. He currently serves as the President of the Association for American Innovation and a member and former Chair of the Public Policy Legal Task Force (PPLTF) for the Association of University of Technology Managers (AUTM).
Jeff has a bachelor’s degree chemical and biomedical engineering with concentrations in molecular biology and fermentation technology and from Carnegie Mellon. He also has a master’s degree in industrial administration (business) from Carnegie Mellon where he concentrated on international management, marketing and finance. He earned his law degree from the Duquesne University School of Law with a focus on intellectual property law.
Postgraduate Research Fellow, Mercatus Center, George Mason University
Satya Marar is a Research Fellow at the Mercatus Center at George Mason University where he was formerly an MA Fellow. He holds an MA in Economics from George Mason University and a BA in writing and an LLB with Honors in law from Macquarie University in Sydney, Australia. He is currently pursuing an LLM in US law at George Mason University. He has previously worked at Reason Foundation and the Australian Taxpayers’ Alliance. His research interests include antitrust & competition policy, intellectual property, trade and technology policy.
When Should We Recognize Something as a Property Right?
Alden F. Abbott, Jane Bambauer, Jeffrey E. Depp, Satya Marar
America has historically led the way in intangible property rights. We were the first country...
When Should We Recognize Something as a Property Right?
The First Amendment in Trademark Law after Vidal v. Elster
Barbara Lauriat, Lisa P. Ramsey, Zvi Rosen, Eugene Volokh
In Vidal v. Elster (the “Trump Too Small” case), the Supreme Court unanimously upheld a...
Tech Roundup Episode 22 - Training Artificial Intelligence & Copyright Law
Timothy B. Lee, Pamela Samuelson, Kristian Stout, Brent Skorup
Moderated by Brent Skorup, experts Timothy B. Lee, Professor Pamela Samuelson, and Kristian Stout discuss...