Beth Noveck

Beth Simone Noveck is the McClatchy Visiting Associate Professor. She is a Professor of Law and Director of the Institute for Information Law & Policy (http://www.nyls.edu/infolaw) at New York Law School. Noveck teaches in the areas of intellectual property and innovation law and policy, constitutional law, e-democracy and e-government.

Noveck has pioneered the creation of a collaborative Do Tank (http://dotank.nyls.edu), a first-of-its kind R&D lab, harnessing the tools of information and communications to the goals of social justice and civil liberties. The Do Tank develops legal code, software code and social practices that foster democratic, open and collaborative ways of learning, working and governing.

With the support of the MacArthur Foundation, Omidyar Network, IBM, Microsoft, HP, GE, Oracle and Red Hat, and in cooperation with the United States Patent and Trademark Office, Professor Noveck is currently developing the Community Patent Review project, the legal, policy and software framework to open patent examination for public participation. She is the founder of the State of Play conferences, the annual gathering on virtual worlds and the convenor of State of Play Academy, an experimental space for studying the impact of virtual worlds on learning and opening up legal education across disciplines.

Noveck's research and writing focus on the relationship between technology, intellectual property, civic identity and democratic theory, with an emphasis on how groups form and operate online. She is the co-editor of the book series, Ex Machina: Law, Technology and Society (NYU Press) and blogs at The Cairns Blog, available at http://cairns.typepad.com.

Previously a telecommunications and Internet lawyer practicing in New York, Prof. Noveck graduated from Harvard University with a Bachelor in Social Studies and Master of Arts in Comparative Literature. She earned a J.D. from Yale Law School. After studying as a Rotary Foundation graduate fellow at Oxford University, she earned a doctorate in Political Science and German Studies at the University of Innsbruck with the support of a Fulbright grant.