The annual Mosaic IP Law and Policy Roundtable connects IP scholars with political activists, practicing attorneys, community organizers, and policy makers to produce activist scholarship, to collaborate on various IP Empowerment policy initiatives and projects, and to otherwise help to shape and effectuate a progressive and contemporary IP socio-legal agenda.

This year's conference, which is being co-hosted by the Suffolk Law IP Center and the Institute for Intellectual Property & Social Justice (IIPSJ), will be held as a hybrid event at Suffolk University Law School on Friday, October 24th & Saturday, October 25th, 2025. 

The Theme for the conference’s 11th year “IP and the Fabric of Nations” seeks to examine narratives and stories about the role that IP plays in knitting communities, peoples and nations together.

The keynote speaker will be Sue Noe, Senior Staff Attorney with the Native American Rights Fund (NARF), based in Boulder, Colorado.

Ms. Noe is an international expert on Indigenous rights and traditional knowledge. She co-directs The Implementation Project, a joint initiative of NARF and the University of Colorado Law School, that works toward implementation of the UN Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples through education and advocacy at the Tribal, national, and international levels. She regularly attends, and organizes and participates in panels, at the UN Permanent Forum on Indigenous Issues and the UN Expert Mechanism on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples. She is also a former Director of the Indigenous Rights Project of the University of Denver’s International Human Rights Advocacy Center.

Learn more about Ms. Noe and her work at NARF here.
 

This year's conference seeks to engage in critical examinations of a number of topics, including:

• The stories that are told about IP in enabling national excellence in industrial growth, promoting socio-economic empowerment, and solving development challenges, e.g. collaborative approaches to IP production and use across borders such as climate technology cooperation and technology platforms like WIPO Green, or IP as a means of negotiating the international expansion of cultural products such as K-Pop and K-Drama.
• How IP enables storytales of national identity and culture, such as the role of IP in Disney’s capture of European American fairy tales or the complex adoption of the Haka into New Zealand’s sports identity.
• How the stories that we tell about IP and the narratives around IP enable inclusion and belonging in national identity-building projects, especially for marginalized peoples and communities.

For more information about the 2025 Mosaic IP Law and Policy Roundtable, please visit the 2025 Mosaic Conference website.

Questions? Please reach out to Professor Dalindyebo Shabalala (Dalindyebo.Shabalala@suffolk.edu) or Professor Rebecca Curtin (rcurtin@suffolk.edu)