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Biography
Co-Chair, Health, Law and Emerging Technologies Research Group
Research Fellow, Institute of European and Comparative Law
Official Fellow, College Counsel and Assistant Dean, St Catherine's College
BA/LLB Hons (Melbourne), PhD (Melbourne), DipLATHE (Oxford)
St Catherine's webpage here.
Justine Pila came to Oxford in 2004 to take up her posts in the Law Faculty and St Catherine's College. Her research interests lie in the fields of intellectual property law, regulation, and law and technology. She is the author of two research monographs and one text book – The Requirement for an Invention in Patent Law (OUP 2010), The Subject Matter of Intellectual Property (OUP)), and (with PLC Torremans) European Intellectual Property Law (1st edn OUP 2016 and 2nd edn OUP 2019) – and the editor of several published collections, most recently The Oxford Handbook of Intellectual Property Law (OUP 2018) (with RC Dreyfuss). She has published widely in leading generalist and specialist journals, and her works have been cited by courts in the UK and elsewhere.
Justine took her undergraduate degrees in Law and Arts from the University of Melbourne. She worked as an IP solicitor and Associate to the Chief Justice of the Australian Federal Court before commencing her PhD (in Law) at the University of Melbourne.
At Oxford she teaches intellectual property law and theory, and law, regulation, and technology, on a number of graduate and undergraduate courses for the Faculty, and EU Law and Jurisprudence for St Catherine's.
Publications
Recent additions
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J Pila, 'Reflections on a Post-Pandemic European Patent System' (2020) European Intellectual Property Review (forthcoming) Against the backdrop of Covid-19, this paper proposes three ways to improve immediately the operation of the European patent system without the need for legislative reform. Each has particular implications for drug patenting, and reflects an interpretive conception of law and legal legitimacy as requiring the application of legislation in accordance with moral values, including those expressed in constitutional instruments. If adopted, they would: restrict the patentability of second medical indications; expand assessments of the moral and public policy implications of patenting individual inventions; and adapt the FRAND licensing system to cover essential medical technologies.J Pila, 'The Authorial Works Protectable by Copyright' in E Rosati (ed), Routledge Handbook of European Copyright (Routledge 2020) This Chapter considers the European conception of the authorial works protectable by copyright, and the approach of the Court of Justice to determining whether an authorial work exists. To that end, it distinguishes three legal issues: the meaning of the term “authorial work”, the essential properties of an authorial work, and the degree to which a subject matter must possess those properties in order to be an authorial work for European copyright purposes. Only once these issues are resolved is it possible to assess a given subject matter and determine whether it is an authorial work requiring protection in fact. The Chapter surveys the current jurisprudence in respect of these issues. In the course of doing so, it suggests that the Court of Justice’s formalistic conception of the constitutive properties of authorial works lacks coherence and fails convincingly to explain existing case law, and is inconsistent with the usual meaning of “authorial works” in ordinary language, and with the nature of copyright as an author’s right.J Pila, 'Covid-19 and Contact Tracing: A Study in Regulation by Technology' (2020) forthcoming European Journal of Law & Technology A common theme of regulatory responses to Covid-19 has been the use of technology: in attempts to map the virus and its transmission, relax lockdowns and restart economies, and search for a vaccine to end the pandemic, technologies have held centre stage. Using the example of contact tracing, this Comment considers the significance of states’ reliance on technologies to achieve their regulatory objectives and some of the issues it raises. While most of the discussion around contact tracing systems has focused on privacy and data protection, their use also has wider implications for individuals and communities, particularly in the case of mobile apps. These concern legality, moral responsibility and community, autonomy, and democracy, which even expansive conceptions of privacy and data protection are unlikely fully to accommodate.
Journal Article (31)
Chapter (17)
Other (4)
Book (4)
Edited Book (4)
Case Note (9)
Report (1)
Research programmes
Research Interests
The law and theory of IP, especially copyright law and patent law, and including European intellectual property.
The regulatory impacts of technology.
Options taught
Jurisprudence, European Union Law, Intellectual Property Law, Private Law and Fundamental Rights, RegulationNews articles for Justine Pila

Justine Pila proposes ways to improve the European patent system in a forthcoming paper for the European Intellectual Property Review

Justine Pila argues for adaptation of the ordre public/morality exclusion of European patent law at a time of growing concern about the social legitimacy of modern patent systems

New seminars on Law and Technology
Events organised by Justine Pila
17 Feb 2021
Wednesday - 5:00PM
Law and Emerging Technologies Seminar Series
Law and Emerging Technologies Seminar Series
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Speaker Affiliation
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24 Feb 2021
Wednesday - 5:00PM
Law and Emerging Technologies Seminar Series
Law and Emerging Technologies Seminar Series
Speaker
Speaker Affiliation
Venue
03 Mar 2021
Wednesday - 5:00PM
Law and Emerging Technologies Seminar Series
Law and Emerging Technologies Seminar Series
Speaker
Speaker Affiliation
Venue