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Other affiliations
- Melbourne Law School
Biography
Robert holds the Professorship of Intellectual Property and Information Technology Law. He also holds a visiting professorial position at Melbourne Law School. Robert’s previous academic positions include posts at the Australian National University and King’s College London. He has held visiting positions at the University of Cambridge, the Benjamin N. Cardozo School of Law in New York and the National University of Singapore.
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.
His work has been cited by the High Court of Australia, the Federal Court of Australia, the Supreme Court of New Zealand, the Court of Appeal of England and Wales and in an Opinion of an Advocate General to the European Court of Justice.
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.
Publications
Recent additions
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Robert Burrell, 'The Changing Judicial Politics of Copyright Exceptions in the UK' in Shyamkrishna Balganesh, Ng-Loy Wee Loon and Haochen Sun (eds), The Cambridge Handbook of Copyright Limitations and Exceptions (CUP 2021) DOI: 10.1017/9781108671101ISBN: 978-1-108-48304-9Robert Burrell and Michael Handler, 'Keyword Advertising and Actionable Consumer Confusion' in T. Aplin (ed), Research Handbook on Intellectual Property and Digital Technologies (Edward Elgar 2020) Robert Burrell, 'Rethinking the Relationship between Registered and Unregistered Trade Marks' in G Austin et al. (ed), Across Intellectual Property: Essays in Honour of Sam Ricketson (CUP 2020)
Chapter (6)
Journal Article (11)
Research Interests
Intelletual property; law and innovation; legal history