Month: February 2007

My old Through a Glass Darkly site was overrun by comment spam. For that and other reasons, I’ve migrated to this WordPress site. I do not plan to moderate comments, but I do want to take advantage of WordPress’ commenter registration feature. I know this can be a pain, but in the long run, I think it builds a better discussion community. If you wish to leave a comment, I will ask that you register and log in. If you wish, you can leave a brief comment to this entry, which will allow you to complete the relatively painless registration form.

I hope to add some upgrades to this site in coming weeks. One very cool feature of WordPress is the ability to add “Pages” with supplementary content. I invite you to visit the “About” page for information concerning my philosophy for this site, and the “Scholarship” page for information about my legal scholarship. Other pages are coming soon.

Thanks for your readership and support. I look forward to continuing the discussion here at the new TGD.

Imagine we are a small tribe living in a woodland clearing near the end of the last ice age. The long frozen dark is slowly cracking, melting in bits and puddles, flecks of light playing here and there on crocus tips. We drink from those tiny pools, frigid fresh water that tastes like life. Sometimes we forget the still-dark parts of the wood, the hidden predators, the rumors of other people living in cold, dank caves without fresh water. Sometimes we wander deep into the brambles, chasing after tales of richer lakes hidden in the dark, finding ourselves scratched and snagged.

Most nights we gather near the hearth and tell stories. Our best stories are about the end of winter. The storyteller holds a polished stone, etched with the image of a verdant shore flowing with game into a vast water extending, it seems, forever. We can see ourselves, dimly, reflected in the stone, ghosts with a scene of eternity etched on our hearts. We lack words to capture everything this means to us.

We are like so many other stories from so many other lands.

“‘When Aslan said you could never go back to Narnia, he meant the Narnia you were thinking of. But that was not the real Narnia. That had a beginning and an end. It was only a shadow or a copy of the real Narnia which has always been there and always will be there: just as our own world, England and all, is only a shadow or copy of something in Aslan’s real world. You need not mourn over Narnia, Lucy. All of the old Narnia that mattered, all the dear creatures, have been drawn into the real Narnia through the Door. And of course it is different; as different as a real thing is from a shadow or as waking life is from a dream.'” (from The Last Battle, 1956)

Through a Glass Darkly is about living in the shadow, the copy, the reflection in a polished stone. It is the “already / not yet,” the “Alpha and Omega,” the “was, and is, and is to come.” It is the part of the story we know and the part still to be written. It is the pilgrimage, the journey, the waiting, the hope. It is a small, broken man writing a letter to his friends in an ancient tongue:
βλέπομεν γὰρ ἄρτι δι’ ἐσόπτρου ἐν αἰνίγματι τότε δὲ πρόσωπον πρὸς πρόσωπον ἄρτι γινώσκω ἐκ μέρους τότε δὲ ἐπιγνώσομαι καθὼς καὶ ἐπεγνώσθην — “For now we see through a glass, darkly; but then face to face: now I know in part; but then shall I know even as also I am known.” 1 Cor. 13:12 (KJV).

Imagine we are a small tribe living in a woodland clearing near the end of the last ice age. The long frozen dark is slowly cracking, melting in bits and puddles, flecks of light playing here and there on crocus tips. We drink from those tiny pools, frigid fresh water that tastes like life. Sometimes we forget the still-dark parts of the wood, the hidden predators, the rumors of other people living in cold, dank caves without fresh water. Sometimes we wander deep into the brambles, chasing after tales of richer lakes hidden in the dark, finding ourselves scratched and snagged.

Most nights we gather near the hearth and tell stories. Our best stories are about the end of winter. The storyteller holds a polished stone, etched with the image of a verdant shore flowing with game into a vast water extending, it seems, forever. We can see ourselves, dimly, reflected in the stone, ghosts with a scene of eternity etched on our hearts. We lack words to capture everything this means to us.

We are like so many other stories from so many other lands.

“‘When Aslan said you could never go back to Narnia, he meant the Narnia you were thinking of. But that was not the real Narnia. That had a beginning and an end. It was only a shadow or a copy of the real Narnia which has always been there and always will be there: just as our own world, England and all, is only a shadow or copy of something in Aslan’s real world. You need not mourn over Narnia, Lucy. All of the old Narnia that mattered, all the dear creatures, have been drawn into the real Narnia through the Door. And of course it is different; as different as a real thing is from a shadow or as waking life is from a dream.'” (from The Last Battle, 1956)

Through a Glass Darkly is about living in the shadow, the copy, the reflection in a polished stone. It is the “already / not yet,” the “Alpha and Omega,” the “was, and is, and is to come.” It is the part of the story we know and the part still to be written. It is the pilgrimage, the journey, the waiting, the hope. It is a small, broken man writing a letter to his friends in an ancient tongue:
βλέπομεν γὰρ ἄρτι δι’ ἐσόπτρου ἐν αἰνίγματι τότε δὲ πρόσωπον πρὸς πρόσωπον ἄρτι γινώσκω ἐκ μέρους τότε δὲ ἐπιγνώσομαι καθὼς καὶ ἐπεγνώσθην — “For now we see through a glass, darkly; but then face to face: now I know in part; but then shall I know even as also I am known.” 1 Cor. 13:12 (KJV).

Background

It is my great privilege to work as a legal scholar. As of July 2007, I will be an Associate Professor of Law at Seton Hall University Law School, where I am part of the school’s Institute for Law, Science and Technology.

My scholarship focuses on the law, norms and economics of intellectual property and information. In many ways, I consider myself a “Critical Information Studies” scholar. Much of my work concerns biologically encoded information and the biotechnology and pharmaceutical industries.

I studied law and economics and regulatory theory at New York University Law School, where I earned an LL.M. in Trade Regulation in 1998. I earned my J.D. in 1991 from Seton Hall University Law School. Before entering academe full-time, I was a Partner in the Information Technology / Intellectual Property practice group of McCarter & English, LLP.

Publications
Here is a list of my recent publications:

Patents, Essential Medicines, and the Innovation Game, 58 Vanderbilt Law Review 501 (2005). This article is a game theory analysis of the effects of differing levels of patent protection on access to essential medicines in developing countries.

The Penguin’s Genome, or Coase and Open Source Biotechnology, 18 Harvard J. Law & Tech. 167 (2004). This article is an analysis of whether open source development principles can apply to biotechnology.

Peer-to-Peer Networks, Technological Evolution, and Intellectual Property Reverse Private Attorney General Litigation, 20 Berkeley Tech. L.J. 1685 (2005). This paper analyzes “reverse private attorney general” litigation by intellectual property owners against individuals, using the RIAA file sharing litigation as a model.

The Penguin’s Paradox: The Political Economy of International Intellectual Property and the Paradox of Open Intellectual Property Models, 18 Stanford Law & Policy Rev. ___ (2007) (symposium) (forthcoming). The article provides a game theoretic political economy analysis of efforts to encode “open source” and “open access” intellectual property norms into public policy via the international intellectual property system.

A Virtue-Centered Approach to the Biotechnology Commons (or, The Virtuous Penguin), 59 Maine Law Review ___ (2007) (symposium) (forthcoming). This essay sketches out a virtue ethics/virtue jurisprudence approach to biotechnology intellectual property policy.

Work in Progress

Currently, I’m working on the following projects:

The Information Commons and the Ontology of Information. This paper will explore the metaphor of the “commons” as applied to information. Is information really non-rival and non-excludable? What do we mean when we use the term “information?”

Biotechnology and the Anti-Commons . This project involves an empirical study of the innovation inputs into an important biotechnology product. The goal is to assess the extent to which proprietary rights increased transaction costs during the course of the innovation that led to the production of this product.

A Virtue Jurisprudence of Information. This project will extend the discussion of virtue ethics in my “Virtuous Penguin” article, in an effort to develop a richer virtue ethics approach to information policy.