Speakers & Panels

Technology Panel - Economics Panel - Politics Panel - Law Panel

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Technology Panel - Economics Panel - Politics Panel - Law Panel

WELCOME AND INTRODUCTORY REMARKS

Jack Balkin
Eddan Katz
Laura DeNardis

TECHNOLOGY PANEL

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Moderator:
Geoffrey Bowker

Speakers:
Jason Matusow
Ken Krechmer (Position Paper: Open Standards Requirements)
Peter Strickx
Carl Cargill

The success of the TCP/IP protocols has, in part, emanated from the architectural openness of these network standards and the participatory openness and transparency of the underlying standards process. Yet recently, concerns about interoperability have turned to other architectural layers of information exchange and some have suggested that proprietary standards are constricting architectural openness at the application layer. Defining “architectural openness,� however, is a highly controversial exercise and many competing interests have a stake in the outcome of this debate. Hundreds of organizations establish standards for global information exchange and many have different definitions of openness, interoperability, and compatibility. Those outside the standards-setting process have their own definitions, sometimes conflating independent technical variables of the underlying standards specification, the actual code, the product implementing the standards, and the resulting interoperability and functionality of the product.

This panel will theorize issues of openness and interoperability in technical standards-setting and seek to address some of the following questions:

• What architectural principles of information exchange, if any, can inform theories of open technical standards (e.g. simplicity, universal access, ubiquity, end-to-end access, architectural flexibility, security, backward compatibility, scalability)?
• What counts as a technical standard and as an open technical standard and what are the implications of de jure versus de facto standards ascent?
• To what extent is architectural openness still a concern for information standards and what are its consequences?
• Who are the major stakeholders in the debates over architectural openness and what is at stake? Can consensus be reached on what constitutes openness?
• How extensive is the mosaic of standards-setting organizations and how divergent are their definitions of technical interoperability?
• Can a layered architectural view of the Internet help define openness?
• Do the technical discussions of architectural openness simply reflect underlying political, economic, and legal undercurrents?

ECONOMICS PANEL

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Moderator:
Manon Ress

Speakers:
Rishab Ghosh (Position Paper: Free/Libre/Open Source Software: Policy Support)
An Baisheng (Position Paper: Intellectual Property Right (IPR) Issues in Standardization Part 1; Part 2)
John S. Wilson (Position Paper: A Quick Look at Regulation and Information Technology)
Sherrie Bolin (Position Paper: Standardization as a Business Tool)
Bob Sutor

Because standards exert control over technology and those who use technology, they represent a site of controversy mediating between competing economic interests. Large multinational corporations have historically dominated the standards process; influence over standards can produce significant economic advantage. Some entities have used intellectual property rights to maximize royalty revenue from adopted standards. Others have used standards as part of product-marketing strategies to create barriers to interoperability and restraints on coms. Governments have recognized the importance of standards to bolster economic competitiveness and as trade barriers and have influenced standards development and adoption accordingly.

This panel will examine the issue of open standards through a lens of economic theory and will seek to address some of the following questions:

• What would constitute an economic definition of open standards?
• What is the theoretical relationship among open standards and competition, innovation, and market effects?
• To what extent do open standards and proprietary standards provide network effects?
• What is the distinction between the economic effects of open standards in product implementation versus the political economy of how standards, once developed, are adopted?
• What is the relationship between the openness of standards and global trade policies?
• How is the concept of “opennessâ€� used to advance economic interests?
• Is there anything unique about the role of ICT standards as mediating between competing economic interests?
• From a user perspective, do open standards mandates produce or inhibit product choice?

POLITICS PANEL

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Moderator:
Alexander Galloway

Speakers:
Huang Rengang
Linda Garcia (Position Paper: Bringing the Public Interest into Standard Setting)
Vittorio Bertola (Position Paper: The Age of Mass Standards)
Natalie Sunker (Posiiton Paper: Poltiical Issues--South Africa)
Victoria Espinel

The standards development process involves complex public policy decisions. Though not written or promulgated by legislatures, states, or courts, standards create regulatory structures that transcend international boundaries and affect developing countries and others without a direct voice in standards selection. The organizations involved in setting standards exhibit disparate levels of participatory and informational openness and many do not adhere to principles of due process and consensus. Non-participatory, non-transparent standards development based on closed membership and fee-based access to specifications precludes the possibility of direct multi-stakeholder involvement or open access to standards deliberations and specifications. Once developed, government policies and advocacy toward specific standards often intersect with national economic objectives, military strategy, or political ideology. Some governments have developed ICT procurement policies mandating that purchases be based on open standards. Rationales for these policies have included political requirements of embracing democratic principles of openness and technical requirements for greater interoperability, but finding precise definitions of openness and interoperability has been difficult.

This panel will address political issues implicated by standards-setting, including:

• How can the public interest realistically enter the Internet standards process?
• How can standards decisions reflect the requirements of developing countries?
• What are the consequences of the various approaches standards organizations take regarding procedural and informational openness, membership requirements, fees, due process, and consensus?
• Can theories of democracy inform discussions of the role of standards institutions and the extent to which standards processes should incorporate participatory and informational openness and transparency?
• What is the appropriate responsibility of national governments and international governing bodies in open standards relative to procurement, regulatory intervention and oversight, and standards production?
• To what extent are open standards democratically imperative in politically important areas such as electronic voting and access to public records?
• Can and should international governance bodies develop a legitimating system of accreditation of open standards principles for standards-setting organizations?
• In what ways can standards adoption policies bolster political objectives or reflect prevailing global political tensions? What role do transnational standards play in mediating these tensions?

LAW PANEL

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Moderator:
Daniel Benoliel

Speakers:
Andrew Updegrove
John Morris (Position Paper: Injecting the Public Interest into Technical Standards)
John Palfrey
Robin Gross
Amy Marasco

Technical standards are a form of transnational global rulemaking, one that often operates independently of and invisibly to traditional legal systems. Standards represent a tenacious form of rulemaking because of the conservative momentum of user and developer investments, institutional commitments, and the influence of powerful multinational companies seeking to preserve or advance industry hegemony. The esoteric and technical complexity of protocols and the closed membership approaches of some standards bodies serve to obfuscate the legal considerations and effects of technical specifications. Additionally, legal issues related to intellectual property rights, patents, and antitrust are at the heart of controversies and key decision criteria about what constitutes an open standard. The organizations setting technical standards for information exchange have divergent policies about whether standards should be royalty-free or available based on so-called Reasonable and Non-Discriminatory (RAND) terms and whether members are compelled to disclose patents and other intellectual property rights relevant to the implementation of a standard.

This panel will examine the relationship between legal theory and technical standards and address specific questions related to open standards and the law such as the following:

• To what extent, if at all, are technical standards a unique method of transnational rulemaking? If so, what are the implications of using such processes, and can technical standards be understood within existing theoretical frameworks of law?
• What legal arguments can help theorize definitions of "openness" in standards?
• Is it necessary to have one approach to intellectual property rights in standards or does a diversity of approaches provide a self-regulating market mechanism?
• What should count as RAND licensing of open standards?
• What are the legal considerations for and against defining “openâ€� standards as those that are royalty-free?
• Could independently defined costs determine RAND terms and who would decide fee structures?
• Should standards organizations be able to “ownâ€� standards, especially those mandated by law? Should standards be eligible for copyright protection? What are the global jurisdictional issues and trade issues created by proprietary versus open technical standards?

Jack Balkin

Knight Professor of Constitutional Law and the First Amendment, and Director, Information Society Project, Yale Law School

Professor Balkin received his Ph.D in philosophy from Cambridge University, and his A.B. and J.D. degrees from Harvard University. He writes in the areas of constitutional law, social and cultural theory, cyberspace and telecommunications law, torts and jurisprudence, with a special emphasis on the law of freedom of speech. He is the author of many articles on various aspects of constitutional law, legal theory, society, and culture. His books include: Cultural Software: A Theory of Ideology (1998), Processes of Constitutional Decisionmaking (4th ed. 2000), Legal Canons (2000), and What Brown v. Board of Education Should Have Said (2000).

Welcome and Introductory Remarks.

Eddan Katz

Executive Director, Information Society Project, and Lecturer in
Law, Yale Law School

Eddan Katz is the Executive Director of the Information Society Project and Lecturer-in-Law at Yale Law School. He has written articles and teaches in the areas of cyberlaw, intellectual property, telecommunications, and Coming soon...ethics. He also wrote the hypertext poem Revolution is not an AOL Keyword, which has since been made into a T-shirt through the public domain license under which it was released. Eddan received his J.D. from Boalt Hall School of Law at UC, Berkeley in 2002, with a Certificate in Law and Technology and honors in Intellectual Property Scholarship. He was a Visiting Scholar at the School of Information Management and Systems at UC, Berkeley in 2002-3; and a Resident Fellow with the ISP in 2003-4. Eddan received his B.A. in philosophy from Yale in 1997.

Welcome and Introductory Remarks

Laura DeNardis

Visiting Fellow, Information Society Project, Yale Law School

Laura DeNardis is a 2006-2007 visiting fellow in the Information Society Project at Yale Law School. Her research addresses the cultural, political, and legal dimensions of Internet technical protocols and network security standards, including issues of democracy and expertise relative to Internet standards setting. A technical analyst in computer networking and security, Laura has published in numerous technical journals and served as a National Science Foundation reviewer in advanced network protocols, broadband innovations, and Internet security. Professionally, Laura was previously a management consultant in Ernst & Young’s information technology practice, spent many years as an independent network and security consultant, and taught for three years as an adjunct professor in the School of Information Technology and Engineering at George Mason University. She holds engineering degrees from Dartmouth (A.B.) and Cornell University (M.Eng.) and received a Ph.D. in Science and Technology Studies from Virginia Tech. Her doctoral dissertation, IPv6: Politics of the Next Generation Internet, described how IPv6, a new Internet protocol designed to exponentially increase the global availability of Internet addresses, has served as a locus for incendiary international tensions over globalization and control of the Internet.

Laura is also a classical guitarist enamored with renaissance, baroque, and 19th Century Spanish compositions. Click here to listen to one of her recordings

Welcome and Introductory Remarks

Geoffrey C. Bowker

Professor & Executive Director, Center for Science, Technology,
and Society, Santa Clara University

Center for Science, Technology and Society, Santa Clara University – a center whose mission is to research and promote the use of science and technology for the common good.  He was previously Professor in and Chair of the Department of Communication, University of California, San Diego.  He has written with Leigh Star a book on the history and sociology of medical classifications (Sorting Things Out: Classification and Practice - published by MIT Press in September 1999).  This book looks at the classification of nursing work, diseases, viruses and race.  His recent book, entitled Memory Practices in the Sciences about formal and informal recordkeeping in science over the past two hundred years, which includes extensive discussion of biodiversity informatics, was be published by MIT Press in February 2006 and won the ASIST prize for best book in Information Science that year. More information, including a number of publications can be found at his website: http://epl.scu.edu/~gbowker.


Panel: Technology Panel

Jason Matusow

Senior Director, IP & Interoperability, Microsoft Corporation

Jason Matusow is the Senior Director of Intellectual Property and Interoperability for the Microsoft Corporation. In this role he focuses on a broad spectrum of issues including patent reform, copyright activism, indemnification, and the licensing of Microsoft’s IP assets. Additionally, he is a leading strategist for Microsoft’s global commitment to interoperability and has additional responsibility for the marketing and communications of Microsoft’s software standards work.

Matusow and his organization have ongoing contact with product teams and the executive staff of Microsoft as the company continues to address issues at the intersection of business, technology, public policy, and community. He maintains extensive contacts throughout the software industry and academia to facilitate the flow of ideas and information between Microsoft and others as the global community continues to wrestle with the implications of new business, development, and legal models.

Since joining Microsoft in 1995, Matusow has held a number of assignments for the company. Prior to his current position, he spent five years building and running the company’s business strategy and implementation of its source code licensing initiative. Under his direction, Shared Source grew to cover a broad spectrum of Microsoft technologies reaching more than 2 million participants around the world.

Commentary, musings and critique on the subjects of standards, open source, and emerging business models can be found in his blog at http://blogs.msdn.com/jasonmatusow. He has been published on the subject of open source as a contributing author in the MIT Press book Perspectives on Free and Open Source Software, and other academic journals.

He is a frequent speaker at corporate and academic conferences and symposia. Matusow has presented repeatedly for the Harvard Law School Berkman Center for Internet & Society iLaw program as well as the O’Reilly Open Source Convention, Open Source Business Conference, Münchner Kreis Open Source, and for prestigious organizations such as the U.S. Government CIO Council, the Progress and Freedom Foundation’s Apsen Summit, and NATO. He has been a guest speaker at Cambridge University, Wharton School of Business, Harvard Law School, MIT Sloan School of Management and many other distinguished academic institutions.

He has been in the software industry for more than 15 years. Before joining Microsoft, he founded his own PC and networking business. Matusow is a graduate of Boston University. He currently lives in Portland, OR with his wife and two children.

Panel: Technology Panel

Ken Krechmer

Fellow, International Center for Standards Research, University of
Colorado, Boulder

Ken Krechmer (krechmer@csrstds.com) has participated in communications standards development from the mid 1970's to 2000. He actively participated in the development of the International Telecommunications Union Recommendations T.30, V.8, V.8bis, V.32, V.32bis, V.34, V.90, and G.994.1. He was the technical editor of Communications Standards Review and Communications Standards Summary 1990 -2002. In 1995 and 2000 he won first prize at the World Standards Day paper competition. In 2006 he received the joint second prize in the IEC Challenge paper competition. He was Program Chair of the Standards and Innovation in Information Technology (SIIT) conference in 2001 (Boulder, CO) and 2003 (Delft, Netherlands). He is a lecturer at the University of Colorado, Boulder, CO, USA and a Senior Member of the IEEE. His current activities are focused on research and teaching about standards.

(Position Paper: Open Standards Requirements)

Panel: Technology Panel

Peter Strickx

General Manager, Architecture & Standards, Fedict, Belgium

Peter Strickx holds a MSc in Computer Science (Artificial Intelligence) from the Vrije Universiteit Brussel (VUB), where he graduated in 1987. From 87 till 89 he worked as a research assistant with Prof. Luc Steels (VUB) on second generation expert systems and software agents. In 91 Peter participated in starting Sun Microsystems Belgium. During his 10.5 years at Sun Microsystems Belgium he held various management positions in Sales & Marketing as well as in more technical areas such as sales support.

Since 2001 Peter Strickx is Chief Technology Officer at Fedict, the Belgian Federal Government's eGov/ICT Service. He was the technical lead in projects such as FedMAN, Universal Messaging Engine (UME)and the Federal Authentication Service and co-authored papers on open standards and the use of ODF. His interests include programming and microprocessor & network technology.

Panel: Technology Panel

Carl Cargill

Chief Standards Officer, Sun Microsystems, Inc

Carl Cargill is Sun's Chief Standards Officer, reporting to Dr. Greg Papadopoulos, Executive Vice President and Chief Technology Officer. At Sun, Cargill manages Sun's standardization strategies, activities, and portfolio. He has been at this activity (standardization) for nearly twenty years, and has written two books (Information Technology Standardization: Theory, Process, and Organizations and Open Systems Standardization: A Business Approach ), several chapters in other books on the subject, and the "Standards" entry in the Van Nostrand Reinhold Encyclopedia of Computer Science. He was the Editor-in-Chief of "StandardView", ACM's journal of Standardization, and has written scores of articles on the subject of standardization and its business and strategic applications. He has testified several times before Congress, and has been on panels for the Office of Technology Assessment, the Chicago Federal Reserve Board, and the General Accounting Office panels as an exper t on standardization.

He has held positions on the W3C Advisory Board and Advisory Committee, the Board of Directors of the Open GIS Consortium, the Enterprise Grid Alliance, The Open Mobile Alliance, Object Management Group, OSGI, and numerous other groups. He was Chairman of the Governing Board of The Open Group, as well as Chair of the Standardization Policy Committee of the Information Technology Industry Council. He has been the Director of Standards at Netscape, and a standards strategist at both Sun and Digital Equipment Corporation. He has also been a product strategist, marketing manager, pricing manager, and program manager for various and sundry other companies in the IT arena.

His interests include Medieval History and the history of intellectual capital.

Panel: Technology Panel

Manon Ress

Director, Information Society Projects, Consumer Project on Technology

Manon Ress works for the Consumer Project on Technology (CPTech) and Essential Information, a Washington, DC- based non-profit created about 20 years ago by Ralph Nader and John Richard. Essential Information provides information to journalists, activists and consumers all over the world.

She works on various e-commerce and consumer protection issues such as the definition of consumers, unfair contracts and tort liabilities and on issues related to internet governance such as free speech, privacy protections and fair use rights. Since October 2000, she has been a consumer representative on the US Delegation to the Proposed Hague Convention on Jurisdiction and Foreign Judgments in Civil and Commercial Matters. She is focusing on Intellectual Property issues, building public awareness and interest in debating the value of the public interest in intellectual property rights.

Prior to her present position, she was the Director of the Debs-Jones-Douglass Institute, a labor founded non-profit where she worked on the use of the internet by labor unions. She was the Manager of Education and Technology for an international team working on distance education in Malaysia. She held teaching and research positions at Princeton University and Temple University.

She received a BA and a Master's Degree from Universite de Nice, France and a Master and a Ph.D. from Princeton University.

For a somewhat dated resume, click here.

Panel: Economics (moderator)

Rishab Ghosh

Senior Researcher, United Nations University, Maastricht Economic
and Social Research Training Centre on Innovation & Technology

Rishab Aiyer Ghosh - Research coordinator (OSI board member) Rishab sees his role on the Open Source Initiative board not in advocacy, but in promoting unbiased, evidence-based research on the socio-economic, legal and technical aspects of Free/Libre/Open Source Software (FLOSS) worldwide. He is Founding International and Managing Editor of First Monday, the most widely read peer-reviewed on-line journal of the Internet. He is Programme Leader at MERIT/International Institute of Infonomics at the University of Maastricht, Netherlands, where he moved from Delhi, India in 2000. He coordinated the European Union -funded FLOSS project, a comprehensive study of users and developers, and leads the FLOSSPOLS project studying government use, skills development and gender issues in FLOSS. He is actively involved in initiatives related to government policy on FLOSS in Europe and Asia. He conducts research funded by the EU, the Dutch government and the US National Science Foundation.

Panel: Economics

(Position Paper: Free/Libre/Open Source Software: Policy Support)

An Baisheng

Deputy Division Chief, WTO Department, Ministry of Commerce, People's Republic of China

An Baisheng is a WTO trade negotiator and researcher at Chinese Ministry of Commerce

(MOFCOM) where he is responsible for WTO/TBT related issues, including 3G, WAPI standardization. His current working focus is Chinese submission to WTO Intellectual Property Rights Issues in Standardization (G/TBT/W/251 and G/TBT/W/251. Add. 1). Before coming to MOFCOM in 2002, he had worked for Chinese standardization authority, General Administration for Quality Supervision, Inspection and Quarantine (AQSIQ), where he was responsible for policy research on Chinese international standardization competition strategies.

An Baisheng received his Ph. D (economics) in 2004 from School of Economics of China Renmin University. He is a post-doctoral researcher of law in Law School of Fudan University (March 2006 to March 2008).

An Baisheng has published a book of the economics of standardization and some academic articles exploring the intersection of intellectual property rights and anti-monopoly. He has given speeches on domestic and international seminars on IPR and standardization, including 2005 Standardization and Law Seminar at Stanford University, 2005 APEC High Level Seminar on Intellectual Property Rights, 2006 U.S. National Bureau of Asia Research (NBR) and Tsinghua University Workshop on China Standardization Policy.

(Position Paper: Intellectual Property Right (IPR) Issues in Standardization Part 1; Part 2)

Panel: Economics

John S. Wilson

Lead Economist, Development Economics Research Group, International Trade, The World Bank

John Wilson is a Lead Economist in the Development Economics Research Group of the World Bank. He joined the Bank in 1999 and spent two years in the Bank’s Infrastructure Vice Presidency. Mr. Wilson currently directs research on trade costs, business facilitation, and economic development. He also provides expertise in lending operations and has worked on projects in the Latin America, Africa, Middle East and North Africa, and Eastern and Central European regions. Mr. Wilson has worked on Bank projects under preparation and completed totaling over $1.3 billion.

Among his recent publications include the chapter on “Trade Facilitation: Challenges and Opportunities in Eastern Europe and the Former Soviet Union in From Disintegration to Reintegration: Europe and the Former Soviet Union in International Trade, World Bank 2006. Recent published working papers include; “Do Standards Matter to Export Success? and “Road Infrastructure in Europe and Central Asia: Does Network Quality Affect Trade?” Work in process includes, “Aid for Trade Facilitation: Does it Matter?”, and “Mutual Recognition Agreements and Product Standards: An Empirical Study.” Mr. Wilson was also the lead author of “Reducing Transport Costs in an Era of Security” Chapter 5 in the World Bank’s Global Economic Prospects 2004: Realizing the Development Promise of the Doha Agenda and task manager for Bank in establishment of the inter-agency Standards and Trade Development Facility. Mr. Wilson was previously Vice President for Technology Policy at the Information Technology Industry Council in Washington, D.C. from 1995-99. He has also been a Visiting Fellow at the Institute for International Economics, a Senior Staff Officer at the U.S. National Academies of Sciences and Engineering and National Research Council, and Adjunct Professor of International Affairs at Georgetown University.

Panel: Economics

(Position Paper: A Quick Look at Regulation and Information Technology)

Sherrie Bolin

President and CEO, The Bolin Group

Sherrie Bolin is President and CEO of The Bolin Group, providing standardization, research and analysis, business strategy, and communications consulting. By emphasizing an informed business approach to standardization, The Bolin Group provides clients with a unique package of strategies, implementation plans, and communication methodologies to position their organization in the complex world of standardization and optimize return on investment. She is the creator and editor of The Standards Edge book series, which addresses timely issues in standardization. She is also the co-creator and producer of “The Standards Edge” conference series. Further information can be found at: www.thebolingroup.com.

Panel: Economics

(Position Paper: Standardization as a Business Tool)

Bob Sutor

Vice President, Standards and Open Source, IBM Corp.

Dr. Bob Sutor is the Vice President of Open Source and Standards for the IBM Corporation. In this role he has the responsibility for driving and executing the cross-company business and technical strategy for open standards and open source as they relate to software, hardware, services, vertical industries, and emerging markets. Previously, Sutor was Director of WebSphere Product and Market Management. This included ownership of the WebSphere Application Server, WebSphere MQ, and the WebSphere Business Integration product lines, as well as web services and Service Oriented Architecture.

A 24 year veteran of IBM, Sutor worked for 15 years in IBM Research, specializing in symbolic mathematical computation and Internet publishing. He co-authored the books Axiom: The Scientific Computation System and The LaTeX Web Companion. Sutor was a co-author of the W3C Recommendation Mathematical Markup Language (MathML) as well as the W3C Recommendation Document Object Model Level 1.

In 1999 Dr. Sutor moved to the IBM Software Group and focused on jump starting industry use of XML. This led to positions on the Board of Directors of the OASIS standards group and the vice chairmanship of the ebXML effort, a joint OASIS/United Nations endeavor. Sutor then led IBM’s industry standards and Web services strategy efforts. Dr. Sutor is a widely read blogger and is a frequent speaker around the world on open standards, open source, web services, and Service Oriented Architecture. He is widely cited in the press and was featured in interviews in the Harvard Business Review, CNET, eWeek, and InfoWorld. In 2006 Sutor was named as one of Computer Business Review’s “Open Source VIPs”.

Dr. Sutor has an undergraduate degree from Harvard College and a Ph.D. from Princeton University, both in Mathematics.

Panel: Economics

Alexander Galloway

Assistant Professor, Culture & Communication, New York
University

Alexander R. Galloway is an author and programmer. He is a founding member of the software collective RSG and creator of the data surveillance engine Carnivore. The New York Times recently described his work as "conceptually sharp, visually compelling and completely attuned to the political moment." Galloway is the author of Protocol: How Control Exists After Decentralization (MIT, 2004), Gaming: Essays on Algorithmic Culture (Minnesota, 2006), and a new book coauthored with Eugene Thacker called The Exploit: A Theory of Networks (forthcoming). He teaches at New York University.

Panel: Politics

Huang Rengang

Minister Counsellor of the Permanent Mission to the WTO, People's Republic of China

Mr. Rengang Huang is the Minister Counsellor of the Permanent Mission of the People's Republic of China to the World Trade Organization based in Geneva, Switzerland. He is responsible for matters related to the Council for Trade in Goods and its subsidiary bodies, such as the Committee on Technical Barriers to Trade, Committee on Sanitary and Phytosanitary Measures, Committee on Customs Valuation, Market Access Committee, Committee on Rules of Origin, etc. Since the launching of Doha Development Agenda multilateral trade negotiations by the WTO in 2001, he has served on many occasions as the head of the Chinese delegations to participate in agriculture negotiations, non-agricultural product market access negotiations and trade facilitation negotiations in the WTO. Last year, he led the Chinese delegation to attend the TBT Committee Session, which adopted its fourth triennial review report reflecting for the first time the Issues of Intellectual Property Right in Standardization based on a Chinese proposal.

Mr Huang started his career in public service in 1986 with the Ministry of Foreign Trade and Economic Cooperation (MOFTEC) of China. He worked for six years in the Foreign Investment Administration of MOFTEC, responsible for policy research, international exchange, joint venture project approval, and investment promotion. In 1992, He was appointed Deputy Director of the Interpreting and Translating Service (ITS) under the Protocol Department of MOFTEC and became ITS Director in 1997. In 2000, he became Deputy Director General of Protocol Department, responsible for foreign affairs agenda of MOFTEC ministerial leaders. In February 2002, he became Counsellor of the Chinese Mission to the WTO. Since early 2005, he is the Minister Counsellor of the Chinese Mission to the World Trade Organization in Geneva. Mr. Huang is a holder an M.A. degree in International Studies from the University of International Business and Economics in Beijing, China; an MBA degree from Cardiff Business School, University of Wales, UK; and a B.A. degree in English Literature from Nankai University, Tianjin, China. He has been invited to present or give lectures on trade policy issues at universities in Europe, America, and Asia. He has been involved in creation, compilation and translation of some publications on trade-related topics.

Panel: Politics

Linda Garcia

Professor & Director, Communication, Culture & Technology,
Georgetown University

Linda Garcia is Director of the Communication, Culture and Technology Program. Prior to coming to Georgetown in 1996, she was Project Director and Senior Associate at the Office of Technology Assessment, of the US Congress where she directed studies on electronic commerce, intellectual property rights, national and international telecommunications policy, standards development, and telecommunication and economic development.

(Position Paper: Bringing the Public Interest into Standard Setting)

Panel: Politics

Vittorio Bertola

At-Large Advisory Committee, ICANN; President & CTO, Dynamic Fun

Vittorio Bertola, from Turin, Italy, born in 1974, holds a degree cum laude in Electronical Engineering obtained at Politecnico di Torino. He deals with the Internet in all its aspects, including technical, business, social and political matters, as an entrepreneur, writer, activist and engineer.

While working as a freelance consultant in policy and technical projects, he is presently a Partner in Dynamic Fun, a company he co-founded that lies among the innovation leaders in Italy for what pertains to the usage of wireless and Internet technologies to improve logistical and commercial processes in corporations and to enhance public services. He was previously one of the promoters of Vitaminic, one of the most successful "dot com" companies in Italy, as its Vice President for Technology, a position he held since the foundation of the company through its multinational growth and IPO in Milan's New Market. He previously worked for Omnitel (now Vodafone Italy) and for Politecnico di Torino, where, as a student, he was an elected Board Member.

He is often busy as a conference speaker, a renowned blogger and a writer for Italian newsletters and magazines. He has also been dealing for many years now with Internet policies at the national and international level; he was a member of the United Nations' Working Group on Internet Governance (WGIG), appointed by the UN Secretary General Mr. Kofi Annan, and is a member of the Internet Governance Consulting Committee of the Italian government, appointed by Minister Luigi Nicolais. He represents the global Internet users in the Board of ICANN, the global policy making entity for Internet domain names. He is a Councillor of Società Internet, the Italian chapter of the Internet Society, and is or was a member in the policy boards of top level domain names such as .it and .mobi. Over the last ten years, he has been the promoter of a number of online initiatives, which made him a well known figure on the Italian Internet.

(Position Paper: The Age of Mass Standards)

Panel: Politics

Natalie Sunker

Republic of South Africa, Deputy Director, Intellectual Property, Policy & Legislation, Department of Trade and Industry

Coming soon...

(Posiiton Paper: Poltiical Issues--South Africa)

Panel: Politics

Victoria Espinel

Assistant USTR, Intellectual Property & Innovation, Office of the U.S. Trade Representative

Ms. Espinel serves as the Assistant USTR for Intellectual Property and Innovation at the Office of the United States Trade Representative. In this capacity, she is the chief policy advisor to the United States Trade Representative, President Bush and the Administration agencies on intellectual property and trade issues, and is responsible for developing and implementing United States trade policy on intellectual property.

Among her responsibilities, Ms. Espinel is the lead U.S. trade negotiator on intellectual property, including in the WTO TRIPS Council and the U.S. free trade agreements. In addition, Ms Espinel oversees bilateral discussions with numerous trading partners on a wide variety of intellectual property issues.

Ms. Espinel oversees enforcement of intellectual property protection required under international trade rules. Ms. Espinel is responsible for implementation and enforcement of intellectual property obligations under the WTO agreements and all US free trade agreements. In addition, Ms. Espinel=s office authors the annual “Special 301" review of international protection of intellectual property rights and chairs the interagency committee that contributes to that report.

Prior to assuming her current position, Ms. Espinel served as Deputy Assistant USTR for Intellectual Property and as Associate General Counsel at USTR. As Deputy Assistant USTR, Ms. Espinel helped create and led international outreach efforts for the President’s multi-agency initiative to combat global counterfeiting and piracy (STOP). She was the chief U.S. trade negotiator for intellectual property, managing negotiations at the WTO, US free trade agreements and through bilateral discussions with over 50 countries on a wide variety of IP issues.

As Associate General Counsel, she served as the lead USTR attorney for intellectual property. In this capacity, Ms. Espinel was instrumental in crafting the 2003 WTO Agreement on TRIPS and Public Health and the U.S.’s successful litigation in the WTO against the European Union’s regulations on geographical indications. In addition, Ms. Espinel was the lead IP attorney for the free trade agreements that the U.S. concluded with Singapore, Australia, Morocco and Bahrain.

Before joining USTR, Ms. Espinel was with the law firm of Covington & Burling in London and Washington, D.C., where she led international IP anti-piracy enforcement programs for Microsoft and the Business Software Alliance, directing copyright litigation and enforcement in over 30 countries in Europe, Middle East and Africa.

Ms. Espinel began her legal career at Sidley, Austin, Brown & Wood in New York focused on structured financial transactions.

Ms. Espinel is the author of several published articles on international copyright issues. She holds an LLM from the London School of Economics, a J.D. from Georgetown University Law School, and a B.S. in Foreign Service from Georgetown University’s School of Foreign Service.

Panel: Politics

Daniel Benoliel

ISP Fellow Alumnus, Information Society Project, Yale Law School

Dr. Daniel Benoliel is a lecturer at the Hebrew University, at Jerusalem and the Haifa University Law Faculties in Israel. He teaches Patent law, Biotechnology law and Foreign Trade law. Previously he was a Visiting Fellow with the Information Society Project between 2004-5. He holds of a legal doctoral degree (J.S.D) (With Honors) from the University of California, at Berkeley (Boalt Hall), supervised by Professor Mark Lemley.

Daniel has written on technological standard setting, DRM regulation, digital privacy and copyright law. His writings include: Copyright Distributive Injustice, 8 Yale J. of Law & Tech. (2006), Law, Geography and Cyberspace: The Case of Territorial Privacy, 23 Cardozo Arts & Ent. L.J. 125 (2005); Technological Standards, Inc.: Rethinking Cyberspace Regulatory Epistemology, 92 Calif. L. Rev. 1069 (2004); Cyberspace Technological Standardization: An Institutional Theory Retrospective, 18 Berkeley Tech. L.J. 1259 (2003); and joint EPIC-Yale ISP Comments to the European Commission on Privacy Data Retention (Sept. 04).

Previously, he was also a John M. Olin Fellow (2002-2004); a DAAD Residential Fellow (Summer 2003) at the Graduiertenkolleg für Recht und Ökonomik at the University of Hamburg, Germany; and the recipient of an Information Technology Research (ITR) Research Grant, The Center for Information Technology Research in the Interest of Society (CITRIS) at Berkeley, for work on privacy. His two first papers were also awarded best student articles at the TPRC 2002 and CFP 2004 conferences, respectively.

He received an LL.B & LL.M (Hon.) from the Hebrew University, at Jerusalem and an LL.M from the University of Pennsylvania. Daniel has also been involved in public work as a human rights attorney. Among his activities he has litigated at the Israeli Supreme Court, has served as Amnesty International – Israel Section Lawyer's Network Coordinator and was a member at the National Human Rights Committee at the Israeli Bar Association.
E-mail: benolield@gmail.com


Panel: law

Andrew Updegrove

Partner, Gesmer Updegrove LLP

Andrew Updegrove is a co-founder and partner of the Boston law firm of Gesmer Updegrove LLP. Since 1988 he has worked with over 70 consortia, accredited standards development organizations and open source consortia, and has assisted many of the largest technology companies in the world in forming such organizations. He has testified before the United States Department of Justice and Federal Trade Commission regarding consortia and standard setting, and has filed pro bono "friend of the court" briefs with the Federal Circuit Court, Supreme Court, and Federal Trade Commission on leading standards litigation. In 2002, he launched ConsortiumInfo.org, the most extensive resource on the Internet dedicated to consortia and standard setting, and the Consortium Standards Bulletin, a monthly e-Journal of news, ideas and analysis on standard setting that now has thousands of subscribers. In 2004 he was asked to join the United States Standards Strategy revision committee, received the President's Award for Journalism from ANSI in 2005, and currently serves on the Boards of Directors of the American National Standards Institute (ANSI) and the Free Standards Group. He is a graduate of Yale University and the Cornell University Law School.

Panel: law

John Morris

Director, Internet Standards, Technology, and Policy Project,
Center for Democracy and Technology

John B. Morris, Jr. is the Director of CDT's "Internet Standards, Technology and Policy Project." Prior to joining CDT in April 2001, Mr. Morris was a partner in the law firm of Jenner & Block, where he litigated groundbreaking cases in Internet and First Amendment law. He was a lead counsel in the ACLU v. Reno/American Library Association v. U.S. Dep't of Justice case, in which the Supreme Court unanimously overturned the Communications Decency Act of 1996 and extended to speech on the Internet the highest level of constitutional protection. In that case, Mr. Morris was responsible for the development of the factual presentation concerning how the Internet works, a presentation that served as the foundation for the Supreme Court's landmark decision.

Mr. Morris's ties to CDT are not new. From May 1999 through April 2000, he took a leave of absence from his law firm to serve as director of CDT's Broadband Access Project. The Project undertook a comprehensive assessment of the legal, policy, and factual issues surrounding the emergence of broadband Internet access technologies.

Prior to becoming a lawyer, Mr. Morris had extensive experience with both computers and politics. In the mid-1970's, as a staff member on Capitol Hill, Morris helped to promote the use of computer software to manage and improve constituent communications. In 1981, Mr. Morris joined the Datatel Minicomputer Company, where he was one of the lead system designers of the original version of the Quorum constituent management software. In 1985, he co-founded Intelligent Solutions, Inc., which took over development of Quorum and built it into the leading constituent services product used by Members of Congress today.

Mr. Morris received his B.A. magna cum laude with distinction from Yale University and his J.D. from Yale Law School, where he was the Managing Editor of the Yale Law Journal. Following law school, he clerked for Judge Thomas A. Clark of the Eleventh Circuit Court of Appeals, and worked for three years as a staff attorney at the Southern Center for Human Rights in Atlanta, Georgia. He joined Jenner & Block in 1990.

Panel: law

(Position Paper: Injecting the Public Interest into Technical Standards)

John Palfrey

Executive Director, Berkman Center for Internet & Society; Clinical Professor of Law, Harvard Law School

As Clinical Professor of Law at Harvard Law School and Executive Director of the Berkman Center for Internet & Society, John’s work focuses on Internet law, intellectual property, and the potential of new technologies to strengthen democracies locally and around the world.

John came to the Berkman Center from the law firm Ropes & Gray, where he worked on intellectual property, Internet law, and private equity transactions. John is a co-founder of several technology companies. He also served as a Special Assistant at the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency during the Clinton administration. He serves on the Board of Directors of the Charles River Watershed Association, which does terrific work to clean up our local river, as well as the non-profit that runs Chris Lydon’s and Mary McGrath’s radio program, Open Source. While attending Harvard Law School, John worked at the Berkman Center, was a Teaching Fellow in Internet Law, and served as an editor of the Harvard Environmental Law Review.

Outside of his Berkman Center work, he is a founder of RSS Investors, a private equity firm focused on new syndication technologies, and is Chairman of the Board of TopTenSources, a new media company. He is active in Massachusetts politics.

John graduated from Harvard College, the University of Cambridge, and Harvard Law School. He was a Rotary Foundation Ambassadorial Scholar to the University of Cambridge and the U.S. EPA Gold Medal (highest national award). John is admitted to the New York and Massachusetts bars.

Panel: law

Robin Gross

Executive Director, IP Justice

Robin D. Gross is founder and Executive Director of IP Justice an international civil liberties organization that promotes balanced intellectual property law and protects freedom of expression (www.ipjustice.org). An attorney, Ms. Gross advises policy makers throughout the world on the impact of intellectual property rules before national legislatures and in international treaties and trade agreements. Ms. Gross lectures at international seminars, law schools and universities on cyberspace legal issues including digital copyright, fair use, and Peer-2-Peer (P2P) file-sharing.

In May 2006 UN Secretary General appointed Ms. Gross as Member of his Advisory Group to the UN Internet Governance Forum. Ms. Gross serves as a member of the High Technology Legal Advisory Board for Santa Clara University School of Law, where she teaches International Copyright Law. She represents the Non-Commercial Users (NCUC) Constituency on the GNSO Policy Council at the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN). She is a member of the Board of Directors for the Union for the Public Domain, a nonprofit organization in Washington, D.C. that is dedicated to protecting the public domain. Ms. Gross also serves as a member of the Advisory Board for Computer Professionals for Social Responsibility - Peru, and for FreeMuse, an independent international organization based in Copenhagen that advocates freedom of expression for musicians and composers worldwide.

Panel: law

Amy Marasco

General Manager for Standards Strategy, Microsoft

Amy Marasco is Microsoft's General Manager for Standards Strategy. She leads the team within Microsoft's Corporate Standards Team that addresses strategic policy and engagement issues on a corporate-wide, global basis.

Ms. Marasco joined Microsoft after serving as the Vice President and General Counsel of the American National Standards Institute (ANSI) from 1994-2004, and currently serves on the ANSI Board of Directors. She actively participates in standards policy discussions at the ITU-T, ETSI, ANSI, IEEE, W3C, AIPLA, ITI, IPO, EICTA, and other similar organizations.

Prior to joining ANSI, Ms. Marasco was a litigation attorney for ten years with the law firm of Cadwalader, Wickersham & Taft in its New York office.

Panel: law