Copyright and Intellectual Property Area

As our day-to-day lives depend increasingly on creating “content,” the often misunderstood rules of copyright and intellectual property have an important effect on us. The Copyright and Intellectual Property area seeks to foster an interdisciplinary discussion about the tumultuous cultural battle raging over how we understand the production and distribution of knowledge.

For 2026, we especially invite submissions that explore the intersection of artificial intelligence and copyright. The rapid rise of generative AI tools has brought new complexity to questions of authorship, originality, and ownership. Who holds the rights to AI-generated material? How do training datasets, fair use, and data scraping challenge existing frameworks of intellectual property law? What ethical, philosophical, or creative principles should guide us as machines increasingly participate in cultural production?

We welcome presentations both scholarly and practical that explore the philosophy of copyright, the nuance of copyright enforcement, and the practicalities of living in a world where everything we make becomes intellectual property.

Possible topics include but are not limited to:

• Case studies of recent copyright decisions
• Copyright and IP legislation
• Politics and copyright
• Ideologies and philosophies of intellectual property
• The decline of the public domain
• Creative Commons and fair use in the public sphere
• Digital rights management and the battle over control
• Libraries and archives in the digital age
• Creativity and copyright in the digital age
• Artificial Intelligence and authorship, originality, and ownership
• Training data, fair use, and algorithmic creativity
• Copyright in popular culture
• International issues regarding intellectual property

Submission information:

Please submit your 200-word abstract using the PCA/ACA web submission form at pcaaca.org. You must be a current, paid member to submit to the conference.

Important Dates to Remember:

• Database opens for submissions – Sept. 1, 2025
• Early Bird Registration begins – Sept. 1, 2025
• Deadline for paper proposals – Nov. 30, 2025
• Travel Grant applications due – Dec. 15, 2025
• Early Bird Registration ends – Dec. 31, 2025
• Regular Registration begins – Jan. 1, 2026
• Travel Grant decisions/notifications – Jan. 31, 2026
• Regular Registration ends – Jan. 31, 2026
• Late Registration starts – Feb. 1, 2026
• Preliminary program draft available – Feb. 6, 2026
• Presenters not registered by Feb. 15 will be dropped from the program.

Conference Location:

Atlanta, Georgia — April 8–11, 2026

Email questions to the Area Chair:

Professor Ella Howard, Wentworth Institute of Technology, howarde@wit.edu