PRP PANELISTS

Lawrence Lessig, Author & Panelist
Professor of Law
Stanford Law School

Lawrence Lessig is a Professor of Law at Stanford Law School and founder of the school's Center for Internet and Society. Prior to joining the Stanford faculty, he was the Berkman Professor of Law at Harvard Law School, and a Professor at the University of Chicago. He clerked for Judge Richard Posner on the 7th Circuit Court of Appeals and Justice Antonin Scalia on the United States Supreme Court.

Professor Lessig represented web site operator Eric Eldred in the ground-breaking case Eldred v. Ashcroft, a challenge to the 1998 Sonny Bono Copyright Term Extension Act. He has won numerous awards, including the Free Software Foundation's Freedom Award, and was named one of Scientific American's Top 50 Visionaries, for arguing "against interpretations of copyright that could stifle innovation and discourse online."

Professor Lessig is the author of Free Culture (2004), The Future of Ideas (2001) and Code and Other Laws of Cyberspace (1999). He chairs the Creative Commons project, and serves on the board of the Free Software Foundation, the Electronic Frontier Foundation, the Public Library of Science, and Public Knowledge. He is also a columnist for Wired.

Professor Lessig earned a BA in economics and a BS in management from the University of Pennsylvania, an MA in philosophy from Cambridge, and a JD from Yale.

Professor Lessig teaches and writes in the areas of constitutional law, contracts, and the law of cyberspace.

For more information, please see Steven Levy's profile of Professor Lessig in the October 2002 issue of Wired: Lawrence Lessig's Supreme Showdown or see his curriculum vitae.

R. Polk Wagner, Panelist
Professor of Law
University of Pennsylvania Law School

Professor Wagner focuses his research and teaching in intellectual property law and policy, with a special interest in patent law. He is the author of over fifteen articles on topics ranging from an empirical analysis of judicial decision-making in the patent law to the First Amendment status of software programs.  His work has appeared in the Stanford Law Review, the Columbia Law Review, and the University of Pennsylvania Law Review, among several others. He is a frequent lecturer on intellectual property topics, presenting his research at both academic institutions (such as Harvard, Stanford, Columbia, University of Michigan, University of Virginia, University of California at Berkeley) and prominent industry groups (such as the Intellectual Property Owner's Organization, the American Intellectual Property Law Association, and the Association of Corporate Patent Counsel).

Prior to joining the Penn faculty in 2000, Wagner served as a clerk to Judge Raymond C. Clevenger III of the United States Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit. He holds a law degree from Stanford, an engineering degree from the University of Michigan, and was the 1994-95 Roger M. Jones Fellow at the London School of Economics.

For more information on R. Polk Wagner, visit his website at http://polkwagner.com/.

Ronald Daniels, Moderator
Provost & Professor of Law
University of Pennsylvania

Ronald Daniels was appointed Provost of the University of Pennsylvania and a member of the Penn Law faculty in 2005, coming from the University of Toronto where he had been the Dean at its law school since 1995.   Daniels is the author or editor of numerous scholarly articles and books, including Rethinking the Welfare State: The Prospects for Government by Voucher (with Michael Trebilcock, Routledge); Decision-Making In Canada (with Randall Morck, University of Calgary Corporate Press); “Special Issue on the Corporate Stakeholder Debate: The Classical Theory and its Critics,” University of Toronto Law Journal; and "The Role of Debt in Interactive Corporate Governance" (with George Triantis), University of California Law Review. His current scholarly interests lie in the relationship between law and international development. Daniels is also active in public policy formation and has led several public task forces dealing with corporate governance, securities regulation, electricity market structure, and public accounting reform.