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School of Law

Professor Jonathan Griffiths, BA (Oxon) MA

Jonathan

Professor of Intellectual Property Law and Head of the Department of Law

Email: j.griffiths@qmul.ac.uk
Telephone: +44 (0)20 7882 8121
Room Number: Mile End

Profile

Jonathan Griffiths is Professor of Intellectual Property Law and Head of the Department of Law (since September 2022) at Queen Mary University of London. His main research interests are in copyright law (particularly European copyright law) and in the relationship between intellectual property law and fundamental rights.

He has written widely in both of these areas. Recent work includes ’European Copyright Law & the Charter of Fundamental Rights – Advocate General Szpunar’s Opinion in (C-469/17) Funke Medien, (C-476/17 Pelham GmbH and (C-516/17) Spiegel Online’[2019] ERA Forum 1-16; “Universalism, pluralism or isolationism?- the relationship between authors’ rights and creators’ human rights” in T Synodinou (ed) Pluralism or universalism in international copyright law? (Wolters Kluwer, 2019) 619-640 and ‘Taking power tools to the acquis - The Court of Justice, the Charter of Fundamental Rights and EU copyright law’, C Geiger (ed) Intellectual Property & the Judiciary (Edward Elgar, 2018).

Current work is focused on the historical development of the concept of goodwill in the tort of passing off and on an edited collection of essays on IP and “new constitutionalism” (Hedging their Bets: New Constitutionalism and Global Intellectual Property Protection (with Prof Tuomas Mylly, to be published by OUP, 2021).

He is the editor of the “United Kingdom” chapter of the leading international treatise on "International Copyright Law & Practice" (ed Bently) and is a member of the editorial/advisory boards of the Journal of Media Law, the Media & Arts Law Review and the Nottingham Law Journal.

He is interested in copyright policy and reform and has been consulted on copyright policy by a number of public bodies including the UK IPO, the European Commission, the Dutch Ministry of Justice and the Japanese Cabinet Secretariat. He is a member of the European Copyright Society, a group of scholars founded with the aim of creating a platform for critical and independent scholarly thinking on European copyright law. The Society has published several widely-read policy proposals. See, for example, the Opinions on the Deckmyn judgment and on the Pelham reference.

Undergraduate Teaching

  • LAW6455 Intellectual Property Law – Copyright & Related Rights
  • LAW6456 Intellectual Property Law – Industrial Property

Postgraduate Teaching

  • CCLP075 European Copyright Law

Research

His current work focuses on the historical development of the concept of goodwill in the tort of passing off and on an assessment of the impact of “constitutionalisation” on European copyright law.

Publications

Many of Jonathan Griffiths' publications are available on SSRN.

  • Global Intellectual Property Protection and the New Constitutionalism: Hedging Exclusive Rights, ed with T Mylly, Oxford University Press, 2021
  • “European Copyright Law & the Charter of Fundamental Rights – Advocate General Szpunar’s Opinion in (C-469/17) Funke Medien, (C-476/17 Pelham GmbH and (C-516/17) Spiegel Online” [2019] ERA Forum 1-16
  • “Sound sampling – a permitted use under EU copyright law? Opinion of the European copyright Society in relation to the pending reference before the CJEU in Case C-476/17, Pelham GmbH v Hütter” [2019] International Review of Intellectual Property & Competition Law 467-490
  • “Universalism, pluralism or isolationism? – the relationship between authors’ rights and creators’ human rights” in T Synodinou (ed) Pluralism or universalism in international copyright law? (Wolters Kluwer, 2019) 619-640
  • “Taking power tools to the acquis - The Court of Justice, the Charter of Fundamental Rights and EU copyright law” in C Geiger (ed) Intellectual Property & the Judiciary (Edward Elgar, 2018)
  • “The tobacco industry’s challenge to the United Kingdom’s standardised packaging legislation – global lessons for tobacco control policy?” in Vol 17(2) (2017) Special Issue on Plain Packaging of Tobacco Products, Queensland University of Technology Law Review 66-82
  • ‘Fair dealing after Deckmyn – the United Kingdom’s defence for caricature, parody & pastiche’ in M Richardson & S Ricketson, Research Handbook on Intellectual Property in Media and Entertainment (Edward Elgar, 2017) 64-101
  • ‘Moral Right from a Copyright Perspective’ in Moral Rights in the 21st Century in F Brison et al (eds), (Larcier, 2015)
  • Proposals from Berlin & Paris – intermediary liability in European copyright law’, [2016] Journal of IP, IT and eCommerce (JIPITEC) 70
  • ‘Exhaustion and the alteration of copyright works in EU copyright law – (C-419/13) Art & Allposters International BV v Stichting Pictoright’ [2016] ERA Forum 1
  • ‘“On the back of a cigarette packet” – standardised packaging legislation and the tobacco industry’s fundamental right to (intellectual) property’ [2015] Intellectual Property Quarterly 343
  • ‘The European Copyright Society’s “Opinion on the Judgment of the CJEU in Case C-201/13 Deckmyn”’(with C Geiger et al) [2015] EIPR 129
  • 'Star Industrial Co Ltd v Yap Kwee Kor– the end of goodwill in the tort of passing off' in Landmark Cases in Property Law, S Douglas, R Hickey & E Waring eds (Hart Publishing, 2015)
  • "Enforcement of Intellectual Property Rights and the Right to a Fair Trial", in C Geiger (ed), Research Handbook on Intellectual Property Law & Human Rights (Edward Elgar, 2015)

Supervision

Jonathan Griffiths welcomes proposals for supervision in his areas of research interest; particularly on copyright law, on the relationship between intellectual property rights and constitutional norms or fundamental rights and on law and creative culture more generally.

Public Engagement


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