Copyright history conference announcement

By way of Lionel Bently: AHRC Primary Sources on Copyright History Project:

The conference will be Wednesday 19th and Thursday 20th March 2008 at Stationers' Hall, London; it's a comparative examination of copyright history. The conference is the culmination of a research project involving the creation of a digital resource concerning the history of copyright in five key jurisdictions; France, Germany, Italy, the UK and the US, for the period before 1900. The project involves the selection of certain key documents, their digitisation, transcription, and translation. The project will create a free electronic archive of primary sources from the invention of the printing press (ca1450) to the Berne Convention (1886): in facsimile and transcription, translated and key word searchable. The documents will include statutes, materials relating to legislative history, case law, tracts, and commentaries. Editorial headnotes will provide context. The project is entirely publicly-funded by the Arts and Humanities Research Council and benefits from an advisory board of internationally-recognised experts in relevant fields. When complete, the digital resource will be hugely valuable to scholars from all disciplines interested in the history of copyright. More information about the project is available at Primary Sources on Copyright History.

Keynote Speakers: Professor Mark Rose, University of California Santa Barbara, Professor Laurent Pfister, University of Versailles Saint-Quentin, and Professor Karl Nikolaus Peifer Köln University.