Conferences

The guiding principles of the Working Group are two-fold:

• Hypotheses can only be “ruled out” or “ruled in” on the basis of reason and evidence.
• Understanding the functioning of complex systems—such as the property rights system that structures the process of technological innovation—requires that the appropriate bodies of evidence and the analytic tools to assess them be drawn from multiple disciplines.

Of the broad range of vehicles by which scholars can disseminate their research, conferences are among the most efficient. At conferences, researchers are able to share their ideas, present their findings, and engage in scholarly debate with of their colleagues.

At Hoover IP² conferences, which draw participants from a variety of fields, invited researchers have the opportunity to present their findings to those with different theoretical perspectives and academic training and, thus, to test if their results are robust to alternative ways of looking at evidence.

By including scholars from a wide variety of disciplines (for example, business, economics, engineering, history, law, medicine and the life sciences, and political science), the Hoover IP² conferences will expand the number of researchers in the patent literature beyond the legal academy and encourage interdisciplinary scholarly research.

CONFERENCE ORGANIZATION

• Researchers will be invited to present their work on the basis of its academic quality, independent of any policy or normative implications.
• The number of papers presented at any conference will be limited, and, thus allow ample time for their full presentation and interactive discussion.
• Each presented paper will have a formal discussant, typically drawn from outside the presenter’s home discipline.