smb7 – Page 2 – Akron Law Announcements

Calling the Akron Law Class of 2015!

The 2015 Class Gift will establish the Student Emergency Fund, which will be available to all law students at the times when they need financial help the most. This fund is intended to help students when they might ordinarily have to choose between educational and personal expenses. The Student Emergency Fund will be available to help students in a variety of emergency financial situations from rent assistance to pet or automotive care needs. Students will not need to repay the money they receive; it’s just there to help.

Thanks to our first Class of 2015 participants:

Jill Machniak-Gallagher
Lisa Owings

Here are all of the ways you can give to the Student Emergency Fund:

Online at www.lawalum.uakron.edu/classgift.
Forms are available in the School of Law Dean’s Office.
Gifts made in support of Professor Huhn’s “walk into retirement” will also be counted toward participation in the 2015 class gift, if designated to the Student Emergency Fund. For more information and to give, please visit startsomegood.com/studentlegacy2015. Please note that Students Embracing a Legacy is not affiliated with or sponsored by The University of Akron School of Law.

For any questions or concerns, please contact Lia Thompson at lme18@uakron.edu or by phone at (330) 972-5298.

Community Service and Networking Opportunity

Earn community service hours and network with Akron area entrepreneurs! Two law student volunteers are needed to assist with the NEXT Ohio Internet Conference, an event sponsored exclusively by Thompson Hine. Volunteers will assist with event set up, registration and other duties.

The event will be held on Thursday, April 9, 2015 from 5:30pm – 10:30pm at Quaker Station. We will need the volunteers to arrive by 4:00pm and stay until 7:30pm. Networking will take place from 7:30 – 10:30pm and volunteers are encouraged to stay and make connections.

If you are interested in this opportunity, please contact Suzanne Brittain, Director of Marketing and Communications at smb7@uakron.edu or 330-972-8619.

Oldham IP Annual Lecture on April 1, 2015

The Albert and Vern Oldham Intellectual Property Law Lecture Series

Featuring: Dr. Paul Heald
Professor of Law,University of Illinois

“The Valuation of Unprotected Works:
A Case Study of Public Domain Photographs on Wikipedia”

April 1, 2015 at 12:00 p.m.
Free and open to the public
Room 152, The University of Akron School of Law
150 University Ave., Akron, Ohio

About the program:

What is the value of works in the public domain? We study the biographical Wikipedia pages of a large data set of authors, composers, and lyricists to determine whether the public domain status of available images leads to a higher rate of inclusion of illustrated supplementary material and whether such inclusion increases visitorship to individual pages. We attempt to objectively place a value on the body of public domain photographs and illustrations which are used in this global resource. We find that the most historically remote subjects are more likely to have images on their web pages because their biographical life-spans pre-date the existence of in-copyright imagery. We find that the large majority of photos and illustrations used on subject pages were obtained from the public domain, and we estimate their value in terms of costs saved to Wikipedia page builders and in terms of increased traffic corresponding to the inclusion of an image. Then, extrapolating from the characteristics of a random sample of a further 300 Wikipedia pages, we estimate a total value of public domain photographs on Wikipedia of between $246 to $270 million dollars per year.