Copyright was born in the wake of the technological and information revolution heralded by the introduction of the printing press in Europe. It has defined relationships between creators, publishers, and society. In the digital age, where copyrighted works are instantaneously accessible in multiple countries and individuals are capable of piracy, understanding the contours of U.S. and foreign copyright law is essential.

This presentation explores and contrasts key areas of U.S., international, and foreign copyright law including authorship and ownership, duration of copyright protection, permissions, work-for-hire, the scope of fair use, and copyright formalities.

Guest Speaker

Susan Marsnik is a Professor and Chair of the Department of Ethics and Business Law, Opus College of Business, the University of St. Thomas. Her research focuses on comparative and international intellectual property and data privacy law. She has been published in law and business journals, books, and encyclopedias and works for professional and legal education programs. In addition to teaching legal issues in a business environment in the United States, she has taught comparative intellectual property law in specialized graduate programs in European universities and as a Fulbright Specialist at Beni Suef University in Egypt.

She has held numerous international visiting professor appointments and regularly presents her work at academic conferences. She has been invited to share her work on comparative copyright with the U.K. Society of Legal Scholars and to the World Arbitration Forum on Intellectual Property in the Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan. Prior to becoming an attorney, Susan Marsnik spent the first decade of her professional life in the book publishing industry and was a member of the Minnesota Book Publishers Roundtable in the late 1980s when she served as Marketing Director at the University of Minnesota Press.