Innovation, Development, Creativity and Access to Knowledge in Pacific Island Countries, 24 - 25 September 2012 ANU (Australia)

This two day conference is intended to bring together a range of participants across a number of disciplinary areas including: intellectual property law (IP), international economic law, traditional knowledge and protection of genetic resources, anthropology, cultural heritage and policy, and development studies.
The Conference will focus on the challenges and opportunities for innovation, creativity and access to knowledge in the Pacific region, particularly in response to the new demands raised by globalization, climate change, the knowledge economy and intellectual property requirements in multilateral and bilateral trade agreements.
The focus will be on learning from experiences in the region to date by presenting case-studies about what works and what does not work and why. Conference participants will be asked to identify a range of strategies that can be used to promote innovation, creativity and access to knowledge, and highlight current cultural, institutional and regulatory obstacles to them. Experiences from countries facing similar issues outside the region are also welcome.

Provisional panel topics include:

• Community management of tangible and intangible resources: The challenges and opportunities
• Enforcement mechanisms for effective protection of intangible resources
• Harnessing customary innovation and resource management strategies
• The challenges of copyright laws for education in the PICs
• Strategies for securing food security in the PICs
• The potential of cultural industries for development
• Control over access to knowledge in the PICs
• Public health and private monopolies: strategies to maximise access to medicines
• IP in Free Trade Agreements
• IP and development

It is envisaged that the proceedings of the conference will be published in a special journal issue or else as an edited volume (both peer-reviewed). This conference is part of an ARC funded discovery project investigating the impact of intellectual property laws on development in Pacific Island countries.
See http://www.ippacificislands.org for further details.

We are now calling for:

• abstracts of papers to be presented
• expressions of interest to chair panels
• expressions of interest in alternative panels around the conference themes

Please note that some funding is available for Pacific Island speakers.

This call will be open until 15 April.
Please contact Miranda Forsyth at miranda.forsyth@anu.edu.au and Eduardo Ramirez at eduardo.ramirez@anu.edu.au with abstracts, proposals and questions.
Please circulate this email as widely as possible to all potentially interested parties.
Dr Miranda Forsyth Postdoctoral Fellow
The Regulatory Institutions Network
School of Regulation, Justice and Diplomacy
College of Asia and the Pacific
Australian National University
T: 02 6125 1505 M: 0429 903 094