Vivek Jayaram on Educating the Next Generation of IP Lawyers

• Vivek’s philosophy of teaching in an engaging and memorable way
• The clash between aging IP laws and transformative new technologies
• How the notion of Fair Use needs to be updated, in light of massive amounts of new satire and parody
• Why now is the time to be aggressive in defending your brand’s intellectual property
• Why Vivek believes that technology remains more a force for good than for bad.

#1.) I've always thought that the best way to teach something really complex and technical, like the law, is to teach it through the lens of something that is relatable and accessible for the students. For a few reasons. It just makes it easier for them to understand when the context in which they're being taught, these sort of complex things, is a context that they're very familiar with. So if you lead with familiarity, and then you introduce the complex topic through that familiarity, the students, I've noticed for years, remain much more engaged

8:02 - 8:38

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#2.) On the one hand, where we have this explosion in transformational technology, I think now, at this point, everybody can agree that, even though we've had things like blockchain and other kinds of digital assets, cryptocurrency, nothing really has the capacity to transform the sort of digital world and the Internet in the way that that we've known it more than artificial intelligence. And so you've got this really powerful transformational technology on the one hand. But then you've got this nearly 50 year old Copyright Act on the other hand.

14:20 - 15:20

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#3.) I think you could make a pretty strong and colorable argument that fair use was just sort of expanding year over year over year, and we were sort of giving more and more rights to parodists and artists and people who wanna engage with satire and things like that more and more rights. And I think everybody seems to be feeling good about that, maybe because we're getting used to it. And I think now in these last couple of years, the pendulum has shifted. And so now, it's up to lawyers and advocates, creatives, everybody to figure out what the new playing field is gonna look like for the next 50 years.

17:53 - 18:35

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#4.) I think if I'm representing a big brand with sort of legacy IP, I would say now is a good opportunity to explore being a little bit more aggressive with takedowns and cease-and-desist letters and really staking claim to your house IP in a way that, maybe a decade ago, or even 5 years ago, would have been more difficult because of the latitude granted initially by district courts, and a ultimately bubbling up into the appellate courts, and even the Supreme Court on this very use issue.

20:00 - 21:00

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#5.) I think making content has never been easier, and that, I think, is amazing. Because I'm still one of the remaining techno optimists. I still think technology can solve more problems than it creates. I acknowledge that it creates problems. But I do believe that it's solving a lot of problems. You know, on the one hand you've got, and let's take generative AI in one hand, you've got deepfakes of Taylor Swift, which I think we can all agree is wrong and bad. But, on the other hand, look at what generative AI has already done in healthcare, for example, right! Look what it is already done in terms of providing access to education. Right? These are really big and important things in America and around the world. And so I do believe that technology is ultimately a good thing.

22:51 - 23:45