Professor Lionel Bently

Lionel is one of our Professorial Fellows, and the Herchel Smith Professor of Intellectual Property Law. His research group is based at the Centre for Intellectual Property and Information Law (CIPIL).

Biography

Lionel studied Law as an undergraduate at the University of Cambridge, and was elected to the Emmanuel Fellowship in 2004. His expertise covers all fields of Intellectual Property (IP) and has held a range of positions and advisory roles across his career. He has been heavily involved in policy work at a national and Europe–wide level, advised the UK Government on IP and led the 2010 project presented to the World Intellectual Property Organisation's Standing Committee on Patents. Lionel has taught as a Lecturer in Law at the University of Keele and a Professor of Law at King's College, London, and has held visiting posts in Australia, Singapore, the USA and Canada. He is also a qualified barrister and a door tenant at 11 South Square Chambers, London. In 2023, he was elected an Honorary KC by the Ministry of Justice, and in the same year was an inductee into the Intellectual Property Hall of Fame.

Teaching

Lionel is one of our Teaching Fellows as well as his Professorship. He teaches the 'Intellectual Property' paper to our undergraduates and supervises PhD students as part of his work at the CIPIL.

Research

He is an expert in IP Law, covering copyright, designs, trade marks, trade secrets, patents and geographical indications. He has written widely on aspects of UK and European Intellectual Property. He is particularly interested in the history of intellectual property law in the UK and the former British Empire. Lionel is co–author of The Making of Modern Intellectual Property Law: The British Experience, 1760-1911 (CUP, 1999) (with former Emmanuel research fellow, Brad Sherman, now ARC Laureate at the University of Queensland); Intellectual Property Law (OUP, 2001, and now in its 5th edition); Gurry on Confidence: The Law of Confidentiality (OUP, 2012) with Tanya Aplin, Phill Johnson and Simon Malynicz, K.C.); and Global Mandatory Fair Use: The Right of Quotation in International Copyright Law (CUP, 2020 (with Tanya Aplin).

Lionel is co-director of Primary Sources on Copyright, 1450–1900 (www.copyrighthistory.org), a digital resource making available key documents relating to the history of copyright in the UK, France, Germany, the Netherlands, Spain, Portugal, Italy (Venice), the Vatican, Scandinavia, the United State, and the Jewish diaspora. He was founding co-director of the International Society for the History and Theory of Intellectual Property (ISHTIP). Lionel led the team of researchers that advised the Gowers Committee reviewing Intellectual Property on Economics of Copyright Term Extension in relation to Sound Recordings and was part of the team that produced a report for HM Treasury on Models of Exploitation of Public Data by Trading Funds. He was also part of the 'Wittem Group' of Copyright Scholars who worked up a proposed 'European Copyright Code', and an inaugural member of the European Copyright Society (which he chaired in 2016).