The Centre for Intellectual Property and Information Law (CIPIL) hosted its Annual Spring Conference on March 17, 2023, with the theme "Intellectual Property Rights as Allied Rights: Bill Cornish and the Making of Today’s Intellectual Property System" and LML’s Professor Kathy Liddell gave a talk entitled ‘The IP Family: Are Pharmaceutical Regulatory Exclusivities in the Clan?’.
The conference commemorated Professor Bill Cornish’ life, including the first student textbook on intellectual property which he authored in 1981. The textbook presented patents, copyright, and trade marks as "allied rights," a categorization that has influenced the legal understanding of intellectual property for the past forty years. The term "intellectual property" is now used globally to denominate governmental and non-governmental organizations, define the field of operation of civil procedure rules and remedies available to litigators, and name professorial chairs, institutes, journals, and scholarly organizations.
The conference aimed to bring together scholars and practitioners to critically examine the origin, history, and usefulness of the notion of intellectual property, as well as thinking of trade marks, patents, and copyright as allied rights. Professor Liddell’s contribution to the conference considered whether pharmaceutical regulatory exclusivities were part of the intellectual property law family.
The conference was a great success and LML looks forward to continued collaborations.