Throughout 2024-25, the Centre for Intellectual Property and Information Law (CIPIL) is marking twenty years of activity. In essence, CIPIL is a community of scholars - academics, post-docs, and research students - who work in all of the principal areas of intellectual property and information law. Directed until 2016 by Lionel Bently, the Herchel Smith Professor of Intellectual Property Law, the Centre has since 2022 been co-directed by David Erdos and Henning Grosse Ruse-Khan.
Throughout its existence, the Centre has functioned as a facilitative environment for the development of scholarly output, policy studies and interventions and doctoral and post-doctoral work. CIPIL has also hosted numerous academic visitors (including Herchel Smith visitors) from all over the world. More particularly, the Centre has organised a regular research seminar and an annual spring conference and supported the Annual International IP Lecture held at Emmanuel College. It has also created a range of digital resources including an editorial project related to the comparative history of copyright 1450-1900, the travaux préparatoires/working papers of all of the main early EU instruments in both IP and Information Law, a virtual museum of images at the heart of major IP cases and databases of historic and contemporary European data protection laws and those laws’ interaction with freedom of expression.
In addition, CIPIL has been the nexus for the development of teaching, including a new LLM course on international intellectual property law in 2004 and both an LLM paper on law and information and a undergraduate half paper in data protection law in 2014. CIPIL has also been involved in supporting student participation in mooting.
The Centre owes a great deal to all those who have contributed to its activities over the past two decades. A special CIPIL page has been set up recording its achievements, honouring these legacies and debts and looking forward to future work.