The Law School has significant expertise in all the key areas of intellectual property law. Members of the group include authors of leading texts and monographs on IP law and members of various advisory bodies on IP, including the Plant Breeders' Rights Advisory Committee. Their research spans a broad spectrum, including IP in the horticultural industries; the history of intellectual property law; its intersections with developments in science and taxonomy; and the concept of invention. Others within the group have written extensively on copyright exceptions, trade mark law and its institutions and international and domestic copyright law. Current interests and projects of group members include the economic analysis of intellectual property regimes; the effectiveness of mechanisms of patent review and enforcement; the history of copyright in architectural works; the history of intellectual property protection for medicinal substances (materia medica), the relationship between idea and embodiment in patent law, and the disjunction between legal and scientific understandings of the concept of purity. The group benefits from a number of research associates and PhD students working on a range of IP issues, and from research associations with colleagues in the UK and US.
Robert Burrell
Stephen Hubicki
Brad Sherman
Kimberlee Weatherall