Wednesday, January 26th, 2022 from 12:00-1:30pm PST

A conversation with Anjali Vats, Jocelyn Bosse, and Chris Byrnes.

This community forum will take a theoretical and historical approach to considering how race, patents, and psychedelics are materially intertwined. By using the theoretical framework of Critical Race Intellectual Property to center the histories of activists of color who have been working toward psychedelic justice for years, the speakers examine how patent law structurally and systematically deprives people of color of rights to use and develop psychedelics and how the US might develop more inclusive approaches toward psychedelic ownership, distribution, and development. They propose principles for racially ethical development of psychedelic medicines. Come join us for this important conversation about the intersections of patents, commodification and race in the mainstreaming of psychedelics!

📷Chris Byrnes is a registered patent attorney at Calyx Law, intellectual property risk advisor, and folk artist at Performing Pro Arts Commons. He has worked at the intersection of intellectual property, international trade, and public policy for Fortune 500 companies, non-profit organizations, and artists for over 15 years, focusing on patent litigation, licensing, and IP commoning. He has a JD from Georgetown Law, a Master’s of Theological Studies from Harvard Divinity School, a Creative Commons Certificate for educators, and undergraduate studies in Physics, Astronomy, and World Religions at Denison University.

📷Anjali Vats, JD, PhD is Associate Professor of Law at the University of Pittsburgh School of Law with a secondary appointment in Communication. She is interested in issues related to race, law, rhetoric, media studies, and popular culture, with particular focus on intellectual property. Her book, The Color of Creatorship: Intellectual Property, Race and the Making of Americans (Stanford UP, 2020), examines the relationship between copyrights, patents, trademarks, race, and national identity formation. She has published in the Cardozo Arts & Entertainment Law Journal, the Quarterly Journal of Speech, Communication and Critical/Cultural Studies, and Communication, Culture & Critique. From 2014 – 2021, Vats was Associate Professor of Communication and African and African Diaspora Studies at Boston College and Associate Professor of Law at Boston College Law School (by courtesy), where she taught Critical Race Theory. In 2016-2017, while on an AAUW Postdoctoral Fellowship, she served as a Visiting Law Professor at UC Davis School of Law. She was also previously a faculty member in the Department of Communication and Culture at Indiana University. Before becoming a professor, Vats clerked for Chief Justice A. William Maupin of the Supreme Court of Nevada.

📷Jocelyn Bosse is a Lecturer in Intellectual Property and Information Law at King’s College London, UK. Her research focuses on the history and politics of intellectual property claims to plants, drawing on the work of scholars in law, science and technology studies, and Indigenous rights. She undertook her thesis project at the University of Queensland, Australia, entitled ‘The role of the law in the circulation of the Kakadu plum (Terminalia ferdinandiana)’. The project explores how the law shapes botanical taxonomy, food science, and the commercialisation of cosmetic products containing native plant extracts, with particular attention to how these laws and scientific practices interact with the rights and knowledge of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples.

This talk will be recorded and immediately available for rewatch for all attendees.

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Locating Racial Justice in the Psychedelic Patent Conversation