NZCIP’s Research
Members of the NZCIP undertake world-class, high-quality scholarship related to intellectual property. The NZCIP’s members’ research and research interests cover a wide variety of areas.
Trade Mark Scholarship
- Rob’s published research has focused on crucial and fundamental issues of trade mark law. For example, his publications have drawn attention to the role of “use”, which underlies nearly all trade mark legal doctrine, and the interface between the operation of the registration system and the protection of unregistered trade marks via the law of passing off. Recently, he has published work in this area on bad faith; other special circumstances and the conclusiveness of the Trade Marks Register.
- Rob’s published research has delved into the historical development of certain areas of trade mark law. Through such research, he has sought to understand how British Commonwealth trade mark law (more generally) has taken on its present shape and how it has been shaped by various forces. This line of work is reflected in “The Historical Development of the Descriptive Use Defence” and “The Divergence of the Law as to When Non-use of a Trade Mark Will be Excused”.
- Alex has considered the evolution of the initial interest confusion doctrine in trade mark infringement law (is working on a related project about the boundaries of the “context of use” of a defendant’s sign in trade mark infringement cases.
Intellectual Property and Human Rights Scholarship
- Alex is interested in the intersection between human rights law and intellectual property and is working on developing a course exploring these topics. Her current research in this area is on the grounds on the justifications for refusal to register “offensive” or “scandalous” trade marks.
Empirical Legal Scholarship
- Joshua’s published research has employed empirical methods to study aspects of copyright law. A recent publication has considered court decisions on the termination right under the Copyright Act of 1976 (17 U.S.C. § 203). A further publication has provided the first large‐scale study of copyright termination notice records from the U.S. Copyright Office.
Copyright Scholarship
- Joshua's empirical work has formed the basis of his upcoming monograph, coauthored with Professor Rebecca Giblin (University of Melbourne), Copyright Reversion: Reclaiming Lost Culture and Getting Authors Paid (Cambridge University Press). He is also working on a project about how we can better understand creativity and copyright law in an AI age.
- Alex has published a piece on whether the individual words of an invented language (such as Lord of the Rings’ Elvish or Game of Thrones’ Dothraki) should attract copyright protection.