LCIL Friday Lecture ‘The Changing Structure of International Law and Its Normative Consequences: International IP Law as an Example’ by Dr Holger Hestermeyer

Lecture summary:  Much like international law as a whole, international intellectual property law has undergone significant structural changes since its inception. The presentation will conceptualize these changes as a fundamental paradigm shift: an initially sparsely regulated field with minimal obligations focusing on non-discrimination has turned into a densely regulated area of international law. The development of international IP law thus to some extent mirrors the development of international law as a whole, albeit with an accelarated time frame. The presentation will not only illustrate this development, but also draw normative conclusions from the development, which – as will be argued – are relevant for international law as a whole if the field wants to cope with its development over the last fifty years.

Holger Hestermeyer (Dr. (Hamburg), LL.M. (Berkeley), LL.B. equivalent (Münster)) is a Référendaire in the cabinet of Advocate General Cruz Villalón at the Court of Justice of the European Union and will, after his work at the court, join King’s College. Before working at the court, Holger was head of a research group at Heidelberg’s Max Planck Institute for Comparative Public and International Law. He has lectured at the universities of Heidelberg, Münster, UC Berkeley and the Heidelberg Center in Chile. He is a Co-director of the Red Latinoamericana de Derecho Económico Internacional and a member of the Executive Council of the Society of International Economic Law. He is a former Fulbright Fellow, German National Merit Foundation Fellow, recipient of an Otto Hahn Medal and an Otto Hahn Award. He publishes in the fields of international, European and constitutional law. Of particular interest for the presentation are Human Rights and the WTO (OUP 2007/2008), Reality or Aspiration: Solidarity in International Environmental and World Trade Law (in Hestermeyer et al. eds., Coexistence, Cooperation and Solidarity, Brill 2012), ESC Rights in the World Trade Organization (in Riedel et al., Economic, Social, and Cultural Rights in International Law, OUP 2014), The Notion of „Trade-Related“ Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights (IIC 2014).

Speaker:  Dr Holger Hestermeyer, Advocate General Cruz Villalón, Court of Justice of the European Union

Date: Friday 17 October 2014

Time: 1pm with sandwiches from 12.30pm

Venue: Finley Library, Lauterpacht Centre, 5 Cranmer Rd, Cambridge