New Professor of Intellectual Property and Information Technology Law

Robert holds joint Professorial appointments at the University of Sheffield and the University of Melbourne. His previous academic positions include posts at the Australian National University and King’s College London. He has been a Herbert Smith Visiting Fellow at the University of Cambridge and Visiting Professor at the Benjamin N. Cardozo School of Law in New York. 

Robert teaches and researches across all areas of intellectual property law. He is the author, with Allison Coleman, of Copyright Exceptions: The Digital Impact (Cambridge University Press, 2005) and, with Michael Handler, of Australian Trade Mark Law (Oxford University Press, 2010; 2nd ed. 2016). His most recent work includes an investigation of the role of rewards as an alternative to the patent system in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, and an interdisciplinary project with a team of psychologists that tests trade mark law’s assumptions about consumers.

Outside of academia Robert has spent many years working as a consultant to boutique Australian firms and, in particular, has substantial experience in litigation before the Australian Trade Marks Office.