Bita Amani, BA (York, with Distinction), LLB (Osgoode Hall), SJD (Toronto)

Bita Amani is Assistant Professor at the Faculty of Law, Queen's University in Kingston where she has been teaching trade-marks and unfair competition, and tort law, since 2002. Prior to that she was co-director of and lecturer for International Aspects of Intellectual Property Law, Osgoode Hall Law School PDP, Part-Time LL.M.. Professor Amani is a fellow of the  Centre for Innovation Law and Policy and former doctoral fellow of theSocial Science and Humanities Research Council of Canada. She has presented seminars on patenting life as a visiting research fellow at the Brocher Foundation in Geneva (summer 2008), a visiting research fellow at the Oxford Centre for Intellectual Property Research, and the Centre for International Governance at Leed's University where she is expanding her research into the European and comparative perspective on biopatenting law and policy. Professor Amani has written and published in the fields of copyright, trademarks, patents, indigenous rights, IP governance and regulatory diversity, and international law. She has a forthcoming book, "Patenting Life in International Law and State Agency: Merchants and Missionaries" to be published by Asghate Publishing in its Globalization and the Law Series (2008). Dr. Amani has served as policy consultant to the Ontario Advisory Committee on Predictive Genetic Technologies, to the Ministry of the Attorney General as editor and annotations editor of laws and regulations for the E-Laws Project, and as policy co-consultant to the Department of Justice and Status of Women Canada on recognizing foreign polygamous marriages with a recent published report. Dr. Amani also serves as legal expert for various media, including CBC Radio's IDEAS programme; she was called to the Bar of Ontario in 2000.