Professor Abbe Brown delivered her inaugural professorial lecture "Saving the world and delivering equality? Law, innovation and power" on March 9th 2018.
Professor Abbe Brown delivered her inaugural lecture to , family and friends at the King's College Conference Centre on March 9th 2018.
Dr. Greg Gordon, Head of School, introduced the proceedings, followed by Professor Margaret Ross, Vice Principal for People Strategy.
Professor Brown then presented her lecture expanding on the key themes of her academic and professional career to date; her personal and professional debts and thanks; and her plans for the future as Chair in Intellectual Property Law at the University of Aberdeen.
Professor Brown explored the power to control the outputs of innovation - held by intellectual property owners. She explored the balance of this power, a reward for developing the innovation, and its potential negative implications, which is not always recognised in the field of intellectual property law. Professor Brown then went on to explore the fact that intellectual property is often not engaged with fully in other areas of law (such as human rights, climate change and equality), which are relevant to the substantive areas in which innovation can be used.
Accordingly, the key theme of Professor Brown’s internationally respected research is the drawing together of legal fields. The goal is to enable more holistic and legally based outcomes to be reached when innovation and its control can clash with fundamental societal challenges. Examples can be delivering wider access to renewable energy technologies, and to literature, educational material and prosthetic limbs by people with disabilities. In so doing, an emerging focus of Professor Brown’s research is the extent to which there are common themes of intersection and solution across these apparently disparate fields.
Following Professor Brown's lecture, colleagues, family and friends gathered to celebrate her achievement, including cutting and eating a magnificent cake.
To revisit Professor Brown's lecture please visit our YouTube channel here
