Professor Jane Ginsburg the inaugural Sir Percy Spender Fellow
The newly created visiting fellowship recognises and supports established researchers, typically professors and senior legal professionals of high international standing, to make a genuine contribution to the research environment at Sydney Law School.
Professor Ginsburg’s recent visit was designed to engage the Sydney Law School community and beyond. A doctoral masterclass for University of Sydney, UNSW, UTS and Macquarie University researchers about incorporating archival research into legal scholarship, hosted by St Andrews College, involved a panel with Kathy Bowrey from UNSW and Alecia Simmonds from UTS.
The treatment of transformative uses under copyright law in the United States and Australia was the subject of a conversation with The Hon. Justice Nye Perram of the Federal Court of Australia co-hosted with the Copyright Society of Australia at the law firm of Gilbert + Tobin. It involved a lively discussion with the community of practitioners and regulators in the field of intellectual property in Australia.
Professor Ginsburg has been one of the pioneers in thinking about the effects of artificial intelligence on intellectual property, and the subject of her seminar at the Sydney Law School was precisely about the challenges and nuances of copyright and generative AI. The co-host for the seminar was the Centre of Excellence for Automated Decision-Making and Society with Kimberlee Weatherall from the Sydney Law School and Daniela Simone from Macquarie University.
Professor Simon Bronitt, Dean, Sydney Law School, said that he and his colleagues appreciated the opportunity to learn from Professor Ginsburg, and look forward to future visits.
Professor Yane Svetiev, Professor Ginsburg’s academic host, said he was delighted to welcome Professor Ginsburg to the Law School:
As an early and leading authority on intellectual property law and an ardent defender of authors’ rights, she embodies the ethos of ‘inspiring legal minds’.
Of her appointment, Professor Ginsburg said:
"My scholarship has championed the rights of authors to attribution and remuneration.
“As is increasingly evident, artificial intelligence can provide authors an exciting tool for creativity, but it also risks replacing creators by generating substitutional imitations of their works."
The Sir Percy Spender Fellowship is one of a suite of new fellowships offered by the Law School. The George Flannery Visiting Fellowship is for early to mid-career researchers, while the Elizabeth Evatt Distinguished Fellowship is appointed by invitation from the Dean. Learn more about the new fellowships.
About Professor Ginsburg
Jane Ginsburg is the Morton L. Janklow Professor of Literary and Artistic Property Law at Columbia University School of Law, and Faculty Co-Director of its Kernochan Center for Law, Media and the Arts. She is a Corresponding Fellow of the British Academy, and Member of the American Philosophical Society and the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, and an Honorary Fellow of Emmanuel College, Cambridge.