Speaker: Professor Madhavi Sunder, Georgetown University Law School

Abstract: Innovation thrives on borrowing from creators, past and far-flung. When does cultural exchange cross the line into cultural misappropriation or theft decried as “cultural appropriation”? Notably, today’s culture wars increasingly turn on intellectual property claims, with calls for attending to the legal and ethical implications of dominant cultural creators taking and profiting from the innovations of disadvantaged and minority creators. Black creators embark on a #TikTokStrike to protest white influencers siphoning credit and revenues from black creatives. The Mexican Culture Minister calls out high end fashion labels for stealing local designs. Black dancers sue blockbuster video game Fortnite for copying dance moves without credit or royalties. Native activists challenge racist trademarks. The implication is clear: intellectual property has a cultural appropriation problem. Is intellectual property an appropriate legal tool for addressing cultural appropriation? This Lecture builds on growing scholarship studying dispossession and racial capitalism to consider intellectual property’s role in promoting or stifling recognition and redistribution for diverse creators.

Biography: Madhavi Sunder is the Frank Sherry Professor of Intellectual Property Law at the Georgetown University Law Center. She is a widely published and influential scholar of intellectual property law, law and technology, women’s human rights, and international development. In 2024-2025, she is the Co-director of the Center for Transnational Legal Studies in London.

For more information see:

https://www.cipil.law.cam.ac.uk/seminars-and-events/cipil-seminars

Speaker: Professor Margo Bagley, Emory University School of Law

Abstract: 2024 was a year for multilateral IP like no other. WIPO Member states adopted two new treaties last year: the WIPO Treaty on IP, Genetic Resources and Associated Traditional Knowledge and the Riyadh Design Law Treaty. Both were groundbreaking in their mention of one or more of genetic resources, traditional knowledge, traditional cultural expressions, and indigenous peoples and local communities, none of which are standard IP topics and all of which have been controversial additions to the normative work at WIPO. Moreover, both treaties address disclosure of origin for one or more of these controversial areas, another first for a WIPO treaty. I will discuss how these two treaties came to fruition and their ramifications for future multilateral IP treaty-making.

Biography: Margo A. Bagley is Asa Griggs Candler Professor of Law at Emory University School of Law. She returned to Emory in 2016 after ten years at the University of Virginia School of Law, where she held the Hardy Cross Dillard chair. She was the Hieken Visiting Professor in Patent Law at Harvard Law School in Fall 2022. Her scholarship focuses on comparative issues relating to patents and biotechnology, pharmaceuticals and access to medicines, and IP and social justice issues. Professor Bagley served on two National Academies Committees on IP matters, is a technical expert to the African Union in World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO) matters, and has served as a consultant to several United Nations organizations. She has served as a US Department of Commerce Commercial Law Development Program advisor and currently serves as a member of the U.S. DARPA ELSI Team for the BRACE project. She is an elected member of the American Law Institute and a faculty lecturer with the Munich Intellectual Property Law Center at the Max Planck Institute in Germany, and also has taught patent related courses in China, Cuba, Israel, and Singapore. She has published numerous articles, book chapters, and monographs as well as two books with co-authors with a third on the way. She is registered to practice before the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office, practiced patent law with both Finnegan, Henderson, Farabow, Garrett & Dunner, and Smith, Gambrell and Russell, and has been an expert witness in several patent cases. A chemical engineer by training, Professor Bagley worked in industry for several years before attending law school at Emory where she was a Woodruff Fellow. She is a co-inventor on patents on peanut butter and bedding technology.

For more information see:

https://www.cipil.law.cam.ac.uk/seminars-and-events/cipil-seminars

Speaker: Dr Stuart Baran is a barrister at specialist intellectual property chambers Three New Square IP

Abstract: The UK Supreme Court has now given its long (and long-awaited) judgment in SkyKick v. Sky. It concerns the appropriate specification of goods and services as part of a trade mark application. In particular, the UKSC was asked to consider the circumstances in which a party applying for a specification broader than its intended commercial activities can be found to have applied in bad faith. The UKSC reversed the Court of Appeal on the approach in law, finding that Sky’s trade mark registrations had been sought partly in bad faith, and should be partially invalidated. The Court found infringement of the remaining specification by one of SkyKick’s products, but upheld the Court of Appeal’s finding that there was no infringement by the other. It also found that it enjoyed a continuing jurisdiction to grant EU-wide relief given that these proceedings started before Brexit. Here I will focus on the part of the judgment about invalidity for bad faith. I will introduce what the Court has decided and its reasons, and then look at three questions: (i) to what extent does this judgment advance the law of invalidity for applying in bad faith?; (ii) is there now a difference between the extent of goods/services for which you can register your mark, and those for which you can enforce it?; and (iii) is this judgment likely to change applicants’ approach to drafting their specifications?

Biography: Dr Stuart Baran is a barrister at specialist intellectual property chambers Three New Square IP. After a degree in chemistry and doctorate in chemical physics, each at Oxford, he was called to the Bar in 2011 and has practised from Three New Square ever since, in all areas of IP but with particular emphases on trade marks and patents. Stuart was lucky to chair the Oxford International IP Moot for several years, starting during his DPhil. As a barrister, Stuart has appeared unled in every IP forum, from the UKIPO and European Patent Office to the EU General Court and Court of Justice as well as the UK High Court, Court of Appeal and Supreme Court. He has been involved in a number of seminal cases across the IP spectrum, including Actavis v. Lilly, Newron v. Comptroller-General, Sky v. SkyKick, and Thaler v. Comptroller-General. Alongside his private practice, Stuart is Standing Counsel to the Comptroller-General which means he represents and advises the UKIPO and government departments on intellectual property issues. He was awarded Legal 500 Junior of the Year for IP in 2018; Managing IP Junior of the Year in 2021 and 2024; and was profiled as a JUVE Patent “One to Watch” in 2023. Outside of work he is a keen orchestral violinist, cook and Italophile.

For more information see:

https://www.cipil.law.cam.ac.uk/seminars-and-events/cipil-seminars