2016

Apple: Privacy, Security and Surveillance

Professor David Partless

Wednesday 11 May | Melbourne Law School

This seminar was jointly hosted by Centre for Media and Communications Law, Intellectual Property Research Institute of Australia and the Oblications Group

David F. Partlett is Asa Griggs Candler Professor of Law, having served as dean of Emory Law from 2006 to 2011. Before that he served as vice president, dean, and professor of law at Washington and Lee University School of Law for six years. He joined the faculty of the Vanderbilt University Law School in 1987. He was a fellow in the Institute for Public Policy Studies and was acting dean from 1996 to 1997. Partlett held positions in the Australian government as a senior legal officer for the Commonwealth Attorney-General’s Department in Canberra, where he was responsible for policy advice on the Racial Discrimination Act and other related human rights and racial discrimination legislation. He later was appointed to the Australian Law Reform Commission.
From 1978 to 1987, Partlett was a member of the faculty of the Australian National University, and he served as associate dean from 1982 to 1985. He is a member of the American Law Institute, the American Society of Law and Medicine, and the Selden Society. He currently teaches torts and has taught courses on torts, judicial remedies, and professional liability. He has written books on torts, defamation and free speech, child mental health and medical malpractice.

A native of Australia, Partlett is an active scholar, with recent work focused on tort law, as well as defamation and free speech, child mental health, and tort theory.

Education: SJD, University of Virginia School of Law, 1982; LLM, University of Sydney School of Law, 1970; LLM University of Michigan Law School, 1974

Defamation and Privacy: Recent Developments

Dr Matt Collins QC, Aickin Chambers
Michael Rivette, Chancery Chambers
Chair and commentary: Professor Andrew Kenyon, Professor Megan Richardson

2 June | 6:00pm – 9:30pm | University House, Woodward | Melbourne Law School
Level 10, 185 Pelham St.
Carlton 3053

This seminar took the form of an interactive workshop and examined the latest developments in defamation and privacy law. Combining professional and academic expertise, the evening was informative for a wide range of practitioners and was designed to meet the CPD requirements of lawyers. Registration included dinner at University House Woodward.

Dr Matt Collins QC, Aickin Chambers is a member of the Victorian Bar and a Senior Fellow at the Melbourne Law School. He is the author of all three editions of The Law of Defamation and the Internet (OUP, 2001, 2005, 2010), the standard international text on the application of principles of defamation law to online publications, and of Collins on Defamation (OUP, 2014), a leading text on the law of defamation of England and Wales. He has acted as Counsel in several of the most high profile defamation and related actions in Australia in recent years.

Michael Rivette, Chancery Chambers is a member of the Victorian Bar. He has acted as Counsel for ASX and NYSE Listed corporations, Commonwealth Government departments, Hollywood actors, celebrities and individuals in relation to privacy, data security, and data breach issues. He has expertise in privacy and data breach class actions, and acted as Counsel in one of the first privacy class actions issued in the Federal Court of Australia. He is the co-author of the Australian section of the leading UK text Tugendhat and Christie: The Law of Privacy and the Media (Oxford University Press), and has written on the area of privacy for the Media and Arts Law Review. He is a guest lecturer on privacy law and data protection in the graduate program at the Melbourne University Law School.

Roundtable Debate: Security Matters More Than Silicon Valley?

Speakers: Dr Alana Maurushat, UNSW, Dr Jeb Webb, University of Melbourne, Professor Julian Thomas, Swinburne Institute for Social Research, Associate Professor Sven Feldman, Melbourne Busines School

Moderators: Professor Megan Richardson and Associate Professor Kwanghui Lim
Thursday 18 August | Melbourne Law School
This roundtable debate between four academic experts canvased issures including innovation, privacy, economics, business ethics, security amd defence.

Kiss & Tell (or be told on): Private Lives of Public People in Asia

Professor Dan Rosen
Chuo Law School, Japan
29 August | 12pm - 1pm |Melbourne Law School

A joint seminar between the Asian Law Centre and the Centre for Media Communications Law.

Professor Dan Rosen compared recent disclosures of private information involving public figures in Japan, Thailand, and the U.S. In particular, he considered the Hulk Hogan case from the United States where a jury awarded a retired pro wrestler $140 million in damages. The plaintiff wrestler sued a website that showed video of his having sex with wife of friend.

Reporting terrorism and UK media law

13 September | Mills Oakley, Level 6, 530 Collins Street, Melbourne

John Battle, Head of Compliance at ITN London

A lunchtime seminar with Melbourne media lawyers which discussed the following:
*Reports that may cause offence and changes in the industry regulations
*The legal duty on journalists to report information relating to terrorism
*Police access to journalistic material including sources and changes in the law
*Information provided by the police/ CPS / open justice issues

John Battle is a leading media lawyer in the UK. He is the Head of Compliance at ITN which produces television news and current affairs programmes for ITV, Channel 4 and Channel 5. He advises journalists on legal and regulatory issues both pre and post broadcast. His specialist areas are contempt of court/ open justice, defamation, copyright law and privacy/ confidentiality. He previously worked as a lawyer for two leading newspaper publishers: Associated Newspapers and News UK. He is the chairman of the Media Lawyers Association and is a member of the Parliamentary and Legal Committee of the Society of Editors. He has been involved in many media law developments such as cameras in court, disclosure of prosecution evidence to the media and greater access to sports footage to news organisations.

UK Media Law - Recent Developments

Chair and commentary: Lynette Houssarini, A/Deputy General Counsel, Legal and Business Affairs, ABC

14 September | Corrs Chambers Westgarth, 8-12 Chifley Square, Sydney

A morning seminar delivered to media lawyers in Sydney.
The first session focused on the Defamation Act 2013 (UK) and its aftermath, including the impact that this important reform has had on media reporting. This session also examined emerging issues in privacy law and the rise of data protection. The second session considered key developments in the law of open justice, including new court reporting restrictions and cameras in the courts, along with developments in police access to journalists’ source information.

Public Lecture: The Phenomenon of Patent Thickets

Associate Professor Stefan Wagner, European School of Management and Technology (ESMT)

Tuesday 25 October | Melbourne Business School

Google acquired Motorola Mobility in a headline making deal for $12.5 billion in May 2012. Less than two years later, Google has sold Motorola Mobility to Lenovo for $2.9 billion but decided to hold on to up to 20,000 of Motorola’s mobile patents. The logic of this deal can be explained best by the existence of patent thickets – situations in which any patent holder can try to prevent competitors from manufacturing a product (in Google’s case, a smartphone or the operating system) as a whole by not granting a license on a component or by demanding unreasonably high licensing fees. Only the acquisition of a big patent portfolio allowed Google to become a credible player in the IP landscape of mobile telephony and to obtain relevant cross-licenses.
This talks focused on the broader phenomenon of patent thickets – which are prevalent not only in mobile telephony but in many other industries as well – and discussed implications for managers and policy makers alike: In particular, the tendency of patent thickets to self-perpetuate and to grow is a worrying trend for all stakeholders. Additionally, patent thickets lead to an increase in firms’ e orts to patent, while at the same time reducing the incentive to engage in litigation.

Stefan Wagner joined ESMT Berlin in February 2011 as an assistant professor and received tenure as of 2016 as an associate professor. Previously, he received his Habilitation in 2010 and his Doctorate in Management (summa cum laude) in 2005 from Ludwig-Maximilians-University Munich. During the course of his education Stefan was supported by the Studienstiftung des Deutschen Volkes (German National Academic Foundation). He was Fulbright Scholar at the University of California Los Angeles UCLA and Visiting Scholar at the National Bureau of Economic Research NBER, Cambridge MA, as well as at the Intellectual Property Institute of Australia IPRIA, Melbourne. Since 2016, Stefan has been a Senior Fellow at the Berlin Centre for Consumer Policies (BCCP).
Stefan’s research interests cover the intersection of firm strategy, technological innovation, industrial organization and law. Currently, he is primarily interested in the interaction of the changing landscape of intellectual property rights (in particular patent systems) and firms’ long term strategy regarding their innovative activities. The results of his research have been published in general management journals such as Management Science and the Strategic Management Journal, and also in top field journals – in innovation, for example in Research Policy; and in economics, for example in the Journal of Industrial Economics and Economics Letters.

International Workshop on Remedies for Breach of Privacy

12–13 December | Melbourne Law School

On 12–13 December 2016 the Centre for Media and Communications Law at Melbourne Law School hosted the International Workshop on Remedies for Breach of Privacy, a collaborative project between Melbourne Law School and Victoria University of Wellington. This two-day workshop included presentations from leading academics, judges and practitioners from Australia, Canada, New Zealand and the United Kingdom.
The papers will be published as an edited collection in 2017, to be edited by the convenors of the workshop, Dr Jason N E Varuhas (Associate Professor, Melbourne Law School) and Dr Nicole Moreham (Associate Professor, Victoria University of Wellington Faculty of Law). The motivation for the workshop is the development over the last fifteen years, across common law jurisdictions, of actions for breach of privacy in equity and at common law. With these developments apex courts are increasingly being called upon to elaborate the rules and principles governing remedies for such actions including damages and injunctions, yet very little has been written on these topics despite their great practical significance. The aim of this workshop was to lead thinking and provide answers to pressing issues facing apex courts by bringing together experts drawn from the academy, practice and the judiciary, and from the legal disciplines implicated by privacy remedies, including torts, equity, and human rights law. This coming together of different types of experts led to a rich and stimulating discourse which greatly advanced thinking on this cutting edge topic.