Professor Charlotte Waelde
Head of School, Professor of Law
Charlotte Waelde joined Exeter Law School in 2010. She is Professor of Intellectual Property Law and is also the Head of the Law School. Previously she was a member of the Law School at Edinburgh University where she took her Ph.D and was appointed Professor of Intellectual Property Law in 2008. She was also Associate Dean for Innovation and Teaching in the College of Humanities and Social Sciences from 2007-2010. Professor Waelde was a founder member, the first manager and a co-director of the AHRC Research Centre in Intellectual Property and Technology Law (SCRIPT) at Edinburgh University which was one of only a handful of centres that was refunded by the AHRC for a second term of five years in 2007(to 2012). Professor Waelde remains a co-director of the Centre
Professor Waelde’s research and teaching focus on intellectual property and internet law and the intersection between the two. Her work is necessarily international in nature, but also has strong comparative, European and domestic influences appropriate to the subject areas. Professor Waelde’s focus is on the interface between intellectual property law and changing technologies, the changes in the law wrought by those technologies, and the impact that those changes have on the way that the law is both perceived and used by the affected communities. Her work explores ways in which the law may be better calibrated to meet the needs of stakeholders. From this base Professor Waelde reaches out into other domains such as human rights, competition law, international private law and the regulation and promotion of new technologies more generally as they intersect with her core interests. She has written extensively in these areas both nationally and internationally.
Professor Waelde’s work has impact not only on the academic community, but in addition, through her consultancy activities and participation in policy making processes, so she transfers knowledge to the community, and helps to shape policy. She has also advised a range of international organisations including OPEC, ICSID and the European Parliament among others and has been involved in giving evidence to a number of consultations including having co-ordinated an academic response to the UK Gowers Review of Intellectual Property; a submission to UK Patent Office Consultation on UK proposed implementation of the Directive on the enforcement of intellectual property rights (2004/48/EC); a submission to the Hargreaves review on Intellectual Property; and a submission to the consultation on the European Commission Green Paper on Cultural and Creative Industries. Having laid the foundations of Information Technology Law as an academic discipline through her Law and the Internet series (with Edwards, L (eds)1997, 2000, 2010), and co-authored a book on Intellectual Property with SCRIPT colleagues Hector MacQueen, Graeme Laurie and Abbe Brown Contemporary Intellectual Property: Law and Policy (2nd ed. 2010) which is unique in its pedagogical style and interactive approach, and through incorporation of research outputs into her teaching, so Professor Waelde’s work also influences the next generation of scholars
Another of Professor Waelde’s projects is as Principal Investigator for an AHRC funded Beyond Text network - Music and Dance: Beyond Copyright Text? The key question being addressed by this network is whether experiential, experimental forms of music and dance are beyond copyright text. If they are, then how might they best be supported by cultural policy and cultural economics to ensure that they form part of our cultural heritage. Along with her Co-Investigator, Professor Philip Schlesinger, and network members, Professor Fiona Macmillan, Professor Helen Thomas, Professor Michael Alcorn, and Dr Gillian Doyle, Professor Waelde will produce a short documentary and a repository of information gathered from the interviews with case study subjects. Key findings have already been fed into policy consultations in Europe and the UK. Lasting partnerships have been forged with dancers, choreographers, musicians, composers, film directors and others engaged in these creative performing arts.
Professor Waelde has been active in securing funding for research and has with colleagues, during her time as an academic, secured over £4million.
Professor Waelde has lectured extensively on the subject of her research in many countries including Australia, India, Brazil, North America, Israel, China, Japan, Switzerland, The Netherlands – among others.
Professor Waelde has successfully supervised many doctoral students from all over the world in the areas of copyright, trade marks, intellectual property more generally, and internet law. She has also acted as external examiner for over twelve PhDs at other Universities in the UK and abroad and numerous Masters theses. She has been an external examiner for undergraduate and postgraduate taught programmes at six different UK Universities.
Professor Waelde’s expertise is recognised externally where her research projects have led to broader connections and opportunities. She is currently the Chair of the Intellectual Property Office Expert Advisory Group for Copyright; she was an invited participant in an event organised by the Royal Society in London to discuss the Science and Technology committee report on open access; she was asked to contribute to a closed HEFCE meeting to discuss strategies for the research councils on open access; she was a member of the AHRC ICT strategy group; and invited to join the round table panel of experts at an event organised by the AHRC on ‘e-publishing in the Arts and Humanities’. She was a member of the Scottish Law Society Intellectual Property Committee. On consultancy work she has been involved in several projects both nationally and internationally including a report on IPRs in international e-learning programmes for JISC/HEFCE (with Intrallect 2005): The application of the database right to e-learning programmes, and Joint authorship and ownership in international e-learning programmes (with Torremans, 2005); a study on Creative Commons Licences and Public Sector Organisations (with Intrallect, Hatcher and Guadamuz) (2005); and an invitation to make a keynote speech by the World Intellectual Property Organisation with supporting paper ‘Online Intermediaries and Liability for Infringement of Copyright’ (with Edwards) WIPO 2005.
