An expert on intellectual property, technology and law, Beth Simone Noveck directs the Institute for Information Law & Policy (
http://old.nyls.edu/infolaw), New York Law School's center for the study of intellectual property, technology and information law. Prof. Noveck teaches in the areas of intellectual property, innovation and constitutional law as well as courses on electronic democracy and electronic government.
Beth Noveck has pioneered the creation of a collaborative "do tank," where students and faculty at New York Law School and across institutions work together in teams to develop legal code and software code to foster open, transparent and collaborative ways of learning, working and governing. The Do Tank (
http://dotank.nyls.edu) is a first-of-its kind legal R&D lab where lawyers innovate, harnessing the new tools of information and communications to the goals of social justice. Projects address, not only how law regulates technology, but how to wield technology to improve law teaching and practice, encourage participatory governance and enable collaboration within organizations and communities.
With the support of grants from the MacArthur Foundation, Omidyar Network, Computer Associates, GE, HP, IBM, Intellectual Ventures, Microsoft, and Red Hat, Professor Noveck is developing the Peer-to-Patent: Community Patent Review project, the legal, policy and software framework to open patent examination for public participation. The project was named by the United States Patent and Trademark Office as one of its Strategic Initiatives 2007-2012. This is the first social software project to directly impact federal decision making.
The Rockefeller Brothers Fund, the Council of Europe and AmericaSpeaks have sponsored her research on online communities by funding the Cairns Project, software to support group formation and collaboration. She also received a grant from ICAIR to support the creation of Democracy Island, an experimental space within a virtual world for research on citizen participation.
Prof. Noveck is the founder and organizer of the State of Play conferences, the annual event on virtual worlds research. With the support of the Maya Foundation, she launched the State of Play Academy, a virtual world space for democratizing legal education by teaching law to non-lawyers. The Academy is also an experimental space for studying the impact of virtual worlds on learning and teaching.
Professor Noveck is a founder of Bodies Electric LLC, developer of the Unchat software for realtime structured and democratic group deliberation in cyberspace. She is a member of the Legal Expert Network of the Institute for the Study of the Information Society and Technology (Insites) at the Carnegie Mellon Heinz School of Public Policy and Management, a member of the editorial board for
First Monday (
www.firstmonday.org),
I/S: A Journal of Law and Policy for the Information Society, and of the advisory board of the
International Journal for Communications Law and Policy (IJCLP). She is a member of the advisory board of the Nanyang Technical University Centre on Asia Pacific Technology Law and Policy (CAPTEL) in Singapore, where she visited as a Fulbright Senior Specialist. She is the co-editor of the book series,
Ex Machina: Law, Technology and Society (NYU Press) and blogs at The Cairns Blog, available at
http://cairns.typepad.com.
Previously a telecommunications and Internet lawyer practicing in New York, Prof. Noveck is also a Visiting Professor at the Annenberg School for Communication, University of Pennsylvania and at Stanford University, Dept. of Communication. Professor Noveck graduated from Harvard University with a Bachelor and Master of Arts. She earned a J.D. from Yale Law School. After studying as a Rotary Foundation graduate fellow at Oxford University, she earned a doctorate at the University of Innsbruck with the support of a Fulbright grant.
Web Presence
Noveck Weblog: "The Cairns Blog"
Selected Publications
LINK: Publications and Presentations
- Online Deliberation: Design, Research, and Practice, Todd Davies and Beth Noveck, eds. (CSLI Publications/University of Chicago Press, May 2006)
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Architecture, Law and Virtual Worlds, Guest Editor, First Monday Special Issue (2006).
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Ex Machina: Law, Technology and Society Book Series, Jack M. Balkin and Beth S. Noveck, eds. (NYU Press)
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The State of Play: Law and Virtual Worlds, Jack M. Balkin and Beth S. Noveck, eds. (NYU Press, 2006)
