Assistant Professor <a href="/Academics/Faculty/ProfilesHbg/EvansTonyaM.aspx">Tonya M. Evans</a> will be a presenter at the Intellectual Property Scholars Conference to be held at the UC Berkeley School of Law from August 12th through 13th. Professor Evans will be presenting on her work-in-progress, “Sampling, Looping and Mashing … Oh My!: How Hip hop Music is Scratching More Than the Surface of Copyright Law.”<br><br>In her article, Professor Evans notes that although the United States Constitution directs Congress to regulate copyright and patent laws in order to serve human values and social ends by promoting innovation and creativity, copyright law as currently applied to the medium of music – both the performance embodied in a sound recording and the underlying musical composition itself – fails to meet that constitutional directive. This point, argues Professor Evans, is illustrated quite clearly in the case of a musical genre like “hip hop” that for decades has relied on the innovative use of existing recordings (most of which are protected by copyright), to create completely new works.<br><br>Held annually, the Intellectual Property Scholars Conference is co-sponsored by the Berkeley Center for Law and Technology, Berkeley Law School; the Intellectual Property Program, Benjamin N. Cardozo School of Law at Yeshiva University; the Center for Intellectual Property Law and Information Technology, DePaul University College of Law; and the Stanford Program in Law, Science &amp; Technology, Stanford Law School.<br><br>The IP Scholars Conference brings together intellectual property scholars to present their works-in-progress and to listen and discuss the work of others. The format of the conference is designed to facilitate open discussion and to help scholars hone their ideas.