2013 Brace lecture: Shira Perlmutter - From Paralysis to Progress: The (Useful) Art of Copyright Pragmatism .

On November 4 2013 the Copyright Society of the USA presented the 43rd annual Donald C. Brace Memorial Lecture featuring Shira Perlmutter, Chief Policy Officer and Director for International Affairs at the United States Patent and Trademark Office. Ms. Perlmutter’s topic was From Paralysis to Progress: The (Useful) Art of Copyright Pragmatism .

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[Joe Salvo] OK. Thank you very much. Good evening. Welcome to

the Copyright Society of the USA's 43rd annual Donald C. Brace lecture.

My name is Joe Salvo, and it is my honor as

President of the Copyright Society to welcome you here

to Fordham University School of Law, and to

introduce tonight's honorary speaker Shira Perlmutter.

For those of you that don't know, the Copyright Society is a member run

non-profit organization. We are celebrating our 61st Year, and, uh,

lots and lots of activities that we, uh, sponsor - I would encourage

those of you who are not familiar to go to our website

www.csusa.org

for a totla schedule of everything that we're doing.

Um, each year the Society seeks to single out one of the leading

thinkers, writers, scholars, practitioners

jurists, or policymakers in our field, that has contributed

to the understanding, discourse, and advancement of copyright,

and to invite them here to New York, to give the

prestigious Brace lecture. Past speakers

are among some of the giants of copyright

and tonight's speaker is no exception.

Shira Perlmutter, for those of you who may not know, currently serves as

Chief Policy Officer and Director for International Affairs at the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office.

In that capacity she serves as the policy advisor to

the Undersecretary of Commerce for Intellectual Property,

and she oversees a number of critical functions, including

the administration and support for all domestic and international IP

policy-related operations, like our trade and treaty obligations;

the oversight of the Office of Policy and External Affairs;

congressional and legislative engagement is carried out

through the Office of Governmental Affairs;

IP education and training through her involvement with the Global IP Academy;

global IP leadership though the IP Attache Program; and economic analysis

through the Chief Economist.

Prior to joining the USPTO Shira served over five and one-half years as the

Executive Vice President of Global Legal Policy, in London, for the IFPI -

the International Federation of Phonograph Industries,

developing and coordinating worldwide IP positions on behalf of the

recorded music industry, and representing the labels before various

inter-governmental bodies including the European Commission.

And, while some of us tend to spend our down time in London

doing such pedestrian things as visiting the London Eye or the Tower of London,

while there Shira also served as a lecturer at Kings College at the University of London;

as a research fellow at the Oxford Intellectual Property Research Center

at the University of Oxford; as a trustee at the Munich Intellectual Property Law Centre