Rutgers Law Professor, Cyberlaw Scholar to be Remembered during Memorial Event Featuring Lecture on the Intellectual Property of LEGO
CAMDEN – Rutgers Law Professor Greg Lastowka, an internationally recognized scholar in the area of of cyberlaw and intellectual property, who died in April 2015 after battling cancer, will be remembered during a memorial event Monday, Nov. 2.
Sponsored by the Rutgers Institute for Information Policy and Law (RIIPL), the event will begin at 4 p.m. with a lecture by Dan Hunter, dean of Swineburne University of Technology School of Law, on “Playing Well: The Intellectual Property of LEGO.”
According to Rutgers Law Professor Ellen Goodman, co-director of RIIPL, Lastowka will be remembered for his inquiry into how people innovate, create, and produce cultural capital through playful exploration.
“Greg’s pathbreaking scholarship in the areas of copyright, trademark, cyberproperty, video games, and virtual worlds was interdisciplinary,” she says. “It forged new fields and impacted cultural studies, media studies, and computer science, as well as law. The annual Greg Lastowka Memorial Project will honor this inquiry with innovative presentations and explorations that reflect Greg’s serious purpose and sense of fun.”
Lastowka’s scholarship helped to define the field of cyberlaw. His book Virtual Justice: The New Laws of Online Worlds (Yale University Press, 2010) is regarded as a landmark treatise on complex intersection of law and virtual worlds. The book identified and addressed compelling and new legal questions about such issues as owning virtual assets and preventing virtual crimes.
He authored numerous law review articles, book chapters, and essays on a variety of subjects, including digital copyright, the regulation of virtual societies, search engine laws, and cybertrespass. His work and opinions have been noted by many national and international publications, such as Scientific American, The Economist, The New York Times, Time Magazine, and Nature.
The Rutgers Law scholar co-founded Terra Nova (terranova.blogs.com), a blog featuring commentary on virtual worlds from scholars in a variety of academic disciplines, and contributed chapters to such books as The Oxford Handbook of Virtuality (Oxford University Press, 2013) and The Gameful World (MIT Press, 2013).
The recipient of a National Science Foundation grant to study online user-generated content, Lastowka presented his research at conferences worldwide, including a keynote presentation at the Eighth Annual Conference on the Internet, Law, and Politics in Barcelona, Spain, in 2012, and a presentation at the 2014 Cyberlaw Scholars Conference.
Lastowka joined the Rutgers Law faculty as an assistant professor in 2004. He was promoted to associate professor in 2007 and to full professor in 2009. While at Rutgers, he received numerous honors, including the Rutgers Board of Trustees Research Fellowship for Scholarly Excellence.
With Goodman and Rutgers Law Distinguished Professor Michael Carrier, Lastowka co-founded RIIPL, which pursues interdisciplinary scholarship focusing on the legal, economic, and cultural implications of information production, distribution, consumption, and regulation.
The lecture will take place in Room 103 of the law school, located at 217 N. Fifth Street in Camden.
At 5:30 p.m. a reception will be held on the bridge, located on the second level of the law school, with music by The Underhills, which features a classmate and longtime personal friend of Lastowka’s.