"Zen Law" Posts on ValleyZen

Who are the most influential women in technology for 2009? You had to be with ValleyZen in the Fairmont San Jose last Thursday to be able not only to see but to experience the answer.

Women have gone a long way in tech, and the Anita Borg Institute for Women and Technology’s Women of Vision’s Award celebration and dinner presented ample evidence of the distances women have traveled. The event was beautifully emceed by CBS News Anchor, Sydnie Kohara with inspirational opening remarks by Telle Whitney, President & CEO of the Institute. The 2009 Women of Vision Awards honored three women who have made significant contributions to technology through outstanding innovation, leadership, and social Impact.

ValleyZen got full access to these inspirational women and the ambitious event. We interviewed the keynote speaker and the award recipients and spoke to numerous other accomplished women in technology, from…

The first time I met Apple Co-Founders Steve Jobs and Steve Wozniak was in 1976 when they came to my office to talk about a company they were starting. Back then, Wozniak and Jobs were leaders in the two strongest directions of Collective Intelligence– building tools to achieve extensions of the human being, and facilitating the collection of human thoughts in a shared repository. Indirectly, the two Steves were followers of Doug Engelbart, the leader in the field of Collective Intelligence. Doug Engelbart’s concept of the use of a mouse was implemented by Apple to revolutionize a new human machine interface…

Today’s post is the sequel to the preceding post “Zen and Venn” (below). Self-study is a prerequisite to finding the Venn lemon shaped common ground. We cannot know what we have in common with another if we do not know our own interests and objectives. One of the most common errors in technology licensing is that the parties come to the negotiating table without having prepared. To avoid this, advance preparation for negotiation means studying, identifying, and discussing within the negotiation team, our positions on key terms, while remaining flexible…

Zen theory and practice can help lawyers, technologists and businesspersons meet the fundamental challenge of negotiation of technology deals: finding the overlapping space in two distinct circles of interest, otherwise known as a Venn diagram…

“If you want to be at the heart of the intellectual universe come to Stanford,” said Stanford Law School Dean, Larry Kramer, introducing Jonathan Zittrain to a pumped-up pro-Stanford audience at the Ritz Carlton, San Francisco. This book signing event was organized by Dean Kramer and Stanford Law School in an effort to recruit the Oxford professor and internationally-known cyberlaw scholar to come to Stanford.
“There is no place like Stanford Law School,” Zittrain agreed and began his talk centering on his latest book, The Future of the Internet and How to Stop It. Flanked by giant digital images from the book, Zittrain described the magic of the early Internet…

On Tuesday April 22nd ValleyZen was invited to observe “The First Amendment in the Digital Age,” a Stanford seminar by Beth Noveck. She is a Professor of Law and the Director of the Institute for Information Law & Policy 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. The topic for this week concerned the development and use of impenetrable anonymizing software which makes it impossible to identify the source of a posting on the Internet. The class discussed the effects on the constitutional rights of freedom of press and individuals’ right of privacy. The guest presenter was Michael Fertik, CEO of Reputation Defender…