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Biography
Dev Gangjee is Professor of Intellectual Property Law within the Law Faculty and a Tutorial Fellow at St Hilda's College. Prior to joining Oxford, he was a senior lecturer at the London School of Economics. Dev is a graduate of the National Law School of India and Oxford, where he was a Rhodes Scholar.
Dev's research focuses on Intellectual Property (IP), with a special emphasis on Branding and Trade Marks, Geographical Indications and Copyright law. Thematic research interests include the history and political economy of IP, collective and open innovation, and the significance of registration for intangibles. He has acted in an advisory capacity for national governments, law firms, international organisations and the European Commission on IP issues.
Besides IP, Dev has teaching interests across private law, including contract, land and tort law. He has won teaching prizes (LSE) and a student welfare award (Oxford). He is a visiting professor at the Munich Intellectual Property Law Centre, having taught on their LLM programme since 2010. He has held visiting fellowships at the Institute of Intellectual Property in Tokyo (2005), the IP Research Institute of Australia at UNSW (2010) and Hong Kong University (2018). At Oxford, Dev was previously Director of the Oxford Diploma in IP Law and Practice as well as a former Director of the Oxford IP Research Centre (OIPRC). He is an Academic Member of the OIPRC as well as a research Affiliate with IP Osgoode, Canada. Dev serves on the Editorial Boards of the Modern Law Review and the open access journal Laws.
Publications
Recent additions
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D S Gangjee, 'Trade Marks and Innovation?' in Graeme Dinwoodie and Mark Janis (eds), Trademark Law and Theory II: Reform of Trademark Law (Edward Elgar 2021) (forthcoming) Until relatively recently, there was a stable consensus: trade mark law had no necessary connection with innovation. This consensus was based on the origin indicating function of trade marks. There is no requirement for either the sign or the underlying product to be innovative and many protected marks consist of pre-existing words or images, such as the surnames Ford or McDonald.Trade mark law has therefore not only been historically indifferent to innovation, it has also actively policed this boundary with patent law. However cracks are beginning to appear in the consensus, for three inter-related reasons. (1) It has been suggested that successful branding generates a feedback cycle, which helps firms to recoup investments in R&D, while also encouraging such investments in the future. (2) Trade mark registrations are analysed as indirect and complementary indicators of innovation. They help to identify patterns of innovation, which can be useful for policy formulation. (3) Trade marks also help to protect and reward forms of innovation which cannot be accommodated in other fields of IP, such as service or marketing innovation. This chapter critically engages with these claims, to assess their normative implications (if any).D S Gangjee, 'Making a Place for Place-Based IP: WIPO and Geographical Indications' in Sam Ricketson (ed), Research Handbook on the World Intellectual Property Organization: The First 50 Years and Beyond (Edward Elgar 2020) Building on developments at the national level, WIPO has played a key role in creating Geographical Indications (GIs) as a contemporary field of intellectual property (IP). Three main initiatives of WIPO have been influential in this regard. First, WIPO served as the forum for refining the GI concept eventually incorporated into Article 22.1 of the TRIPS Agreement, where it remains the international reference point. Secondly, commencing in 1988, dedicated WIPO symposia have identified topics which both reflect and inform the grammar and structure of international GI negotiations. These symposia form part of a broader pattern of activity, alongside reports for the Standing Committee on Trademarks (SCT), technical assistance programmes and the development of informational resources. Thirdly, WIPO is responsible for the operation of the Lisbon system for the international registration and protection of appellations of origin. The recent expansion of this system, culminating in the Geneva Act of 2015, exposed fundamental tensions relating to who has a say in multilateral law making and the extent to which specialized interests can be cross-subsidized by WIPO’s general membership. Disputes relating to the reform of Lisbon go to the heart of WIPO’s constitutional framework.D S Gangjee, 'Sui Generis or Independent Geographical Indications Protection' in Irene Calboli and Jane Ginsburg (eds), The Cambridge Handbook of International and Comparative Trademark Law (Cambridge University Press 2020) Geographical indications (GIs) signal provenance for regional products and function as valuable collective brands. They are increasingly protected by 'sui generis' or independent protection systems, which require the registration of a product specification. Over several decades the functions and features of these independent regimes have stabilized, forming recognizable patterns. This chapter unpacks what we mean by sui generis protection for GIs. It argues that sui generis GI registration and protection systems are important sites where GI theory meets GI practice. Traces of the distinctive, foundational normative commitments of GI protection can be seen in the architecture of sui generis GI protection.
Chapter (19)
Book (3)
Journal Article (12)
Edited Book (1)
Centres
Research projects
- Copyright and Course Packs: A Collision Course of Competing Value?
- Design Law Reform
- Property Law
- Study on Voluntary Registration and Deposit Systems: United States and China
- The Protection of Geographical Indications in the UK after Brexit - The Design of a Sui Generis System
Research Interests
Intellectual Property; Legal History; Private Law
Options taught
Land Law, Tort, Copyright, Patents and Allied Rights, Copyright, Trade Marks and Allied Rights, Intellectual Property LawNews articles for Dev Gangjee

Dev Gangjee delivers keynote speech at European Commission conference

Book Launch: The Confusion Test in European Trade Mark Law

Recognition of Distinction Awards 2019

Finalists for the 17th Oxford International IP Moot Court Announced

Oxford Researchers present at IPRE Conference, Geneva

Dev Gangjee recognised at ECTA annual research awards

EUIPO's Observatory publishes research conducted by the Oxford Intellectual Property Research Centre

Symposium on 'Evolving IP Issues in Brand Protection in the Digital Marketing Era'