The NYU School of Law, Columbia Law School, and the Kauffman Foundation sponsored the Conference on Contractual Innovation, held May 3-4 at NYU Law, to promote the work of scholars whose writings address the intersection of contract law and innovation.
Five NYU Law professors participated in the conference. A paper co-authored by Professor Florencia Marotta-Wurgler ’01 analyzed changes in mass-market consumer software license agreements between 2003 and 2010, finding that contract language seemed to change based on litigation outcomes. Stephen Choi, Murray and Kathleen Bring Professor of Law, and his co-authors presented their work on the production process for contracts, striving to explicate the process within the context of boilerplate contracts, while a paper by Kevin Davis, Beller Family Professor of Business Law, focused on contractual innovations as forms of technological progress that can foster economic growth. Clayton Gillette, Max E. Greenberg Professor of Contract Law, gave his analysis of circumstances in which sophisticated commercial actors would agree to remuneration of one party’s calculated lost profits in cases of a breach of contract. Barry Adler, Bernard Petrie Professor of Law and Business, served as a discussant for another paper examining the seeming reluctance of business organizations to adopt innovative organizational contracts such as business trusts. Dean Richard Revesz made introductory remarks to kick off the first day of the conference.
Posted on May 11, 2012