Marquette Law School to host Nies Lecture in Intellectual Property, April 20

MILWAUKEE — Margo A. Bagley, Asa Griggs Candler Professor and associate dean for research at Emory University School of Law, will deliver Marquette University Law School’s annual Nies Lecture in Intellectual Property on Thursday, April 20, at 4:30 p.m. in the Lubar Center at Eckstein Hall, 1215 W. Michigan St.

Bagley’s lecture, “Innovator Ecosystem Diversity as a Global Competitiveness Imperative,” will explore efforts to increase U.S. competitiveness by removing obstacles to inventing and patenting activity for women and underrepresented minorities and to facilitate contributions by more Americans to the innovation ecosystem.

According to Bagley: The United States once dominated global innovation indicators as measured by patent filings. For more than a decade, China has strategized to dominate this metric. Its government pays filing fees for patent applicants and provides incentives to induce large numbers of citizens to invent and patent. Chinese entities now file and receive more patents than entities in any other country. The United States, too, should have an “all hands on deck” approach to patenting and innovation. Yet many would-be American inventors are unable to either participate in or benefit effectively from the patent system. Consider that women—representing more than half the workforce and 27% of STEM workers—comprise only 13% of inventors on patents.

Online registration is available for this free, public event. Media wishing to attend should contact Kevin Conway at kevin.m.conway@marquette.edu.

Before her current service at Emory, which began in 2016, Bagley served for a decade on the faculty of the University of Virginia School of Law and, this past fall, was the Hieken Visiting Professor in Patent Law at Harvard Law School. In addition to time as a practitioner, Bagley has extensive experience with government and nongovernment organizations in the United States and internationally. She received her law degree from Emory and her Bachelor of Science in chemical engineering from the University of Wisconsin–Madison.

Through public programming such as the Marquette Law School Poll, “On the Issues” conversations with newsmakers, public lectures by leading scholars, conferences on issues of public significance, and the work of its Lubar Center for Public Policy Research and Civic Education, Marquette Law School seeks to advance civil discourse about law and public policy matters.

NOTE: This press release was submitted to Urban Milwaukee and was not written by an Urban Milwaukee writer. It has not been verified for its accuracy or completeness.