“Open Source” and “Open Medicine” at UN

There is an interesting symposium at the UN on Thursday, 4/13/06, that is relevant to the course and might be of interest to some in the class.

UNU-MERIT holds Research Symposium on “Open Source” and “Open Medicine” at UN Headquarters

Can an Intellectual Property regime designed to protect private interests be reformed to open up standards and knowledge? What results when government authorities promote free, open source software in their jurisdictions? Who (if anyone) should own or control access to the human genome sequence? What parallels can be drawn with the fundamental principles of 'openness' for science and society as a whole?

These are among the issues to be discussed at a Research Symposium titled Challenging Intellectual Property Access to Knowledge Issues in Open Source and Medicine, at the UN Headquarters, New York, on 13 April 2006 . The event is co-organized by the United Nations University -Office at the United Nations, New York , and UNU-MERIT.

The speakers include:

* Tim Hubbard, Head of Human Genome Analysis, The Wellcome Trust Sanger Institute,
Cambridge, UK;
* Louis-Dominique Ouédraogo, Retiring Inspector, UN Joint Inspection Unit;
* Tadao Takahashi, Principal Investigator at Project Foresight ICTs-2015, Centre for
Strategic Studies in Brazil; and
* Rishab Aiyer Ghosh, Senior Researcher, UNU-MERIT.

The event is open to interested members of the public. Registration forms can be downloaded from the website of the UNU Office at the United Nations , New York .


See full announcement here.