Expertise: Intellectual Property Law

Vaver, David

David Vaver is a member of IP Osgoode and Emeritus Professor of Intellectual Property & Information Technology Law in the University of Oxford, Emeritus Fellow of St Peter’s College, Oxford, and former Director of the Oxford Intellectual Property Research Centre. He was previously a faculty member at Osgoode (1985-98), UBC (1978-85), and the University of Auckland (1972-78). He rejoined Osgoode in 2009.

Professor Vaver’s main field is intellectual property law and policy. Besides authoring Intellectual Property Law: Copyright, Patents, Trade-marks (2nd ed. 2011), Copyright Law (2000), and (as co-editor) Competition Policy and Intellectual Property Law (2009), all published by Irwin Law, he has edited a five-volume compilation, Intellectual Property Rights: Critical Concepts in Law (Routledge, 2006). He founded the Intellectual Property Journal in 1984, from which he retired as editor-in-chief in 2016 but remains on the advisory board.

Professor Vaver is an associate member of the Chambers of Iain Purvis QC (11 South Square, Gray’s Inn), a former board member of the Intellectual Property Institute (London), and a former member of the UK government’s IP Advisory Committee. He is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Canada and was appointed in 2016 to the Order of Canada for his “leadership in intellectual property law as a scholar and mentor.”

Mgbeoji, Ikechi

Following five years of practice in civil litigation specializing in Commercial Litigation and Intellectual Property Law, Professor Mgbeoji enrolled in the graduate program of Dalhousie University where he graduated, summa cum laude, with an LLM in 1999. A recipient of the Governor-General’s Gold Medal for the highest academic standing at the graduate level in Dalhousie University, he undertook his doctoral research in Patent Law, graduating, summa cum laude, in 2001. Throughout his academic career, Professor Mgbeoji has won numerous academic awards, scholarships and fellowships including the Killam Scholarship and the Carl Duisberg Gesellschaft Award.  His teaching and research interests are in Patent Law, Trademarks, Copyrights, Trade Secrets, International Law on the Use of Force, International Environmental Law, Biotechnology and Law, Comparative Intellectual Property Law, Indigenous Peoples, and Anthropology. Professor Mgbeoji is the author of two books – Collective Insecurity: The Liberian Crisis, Unilateralism, & Global Order and Patents and Indigenous Peoples – and he is the co-author of Environmental Law in Developing Countries: Selected Issues. Prior to joining Osgoode in July 2003, he taught at the University of British Columbia Faculty of Law.

D’Agostino, Giuseppina

Professor Giuseppina (Pina) D’Agostino is a law professor, lawyer, public speaker, board director and recognized international scholar at Osgoode Hall Law School, York University specializing in intellectual property (IP), technology and innovation law and policy. She joined Osgoode in 2006 and is regularly called by Canadian and foreign governments for advice, has testified before Parliament and is a widely published author, regularly serves as a consultant and is a cited authority at the Supreme Court of Canada and in various media. She serves as the Editor-in-Chief of the Intellectual Property Journal.

Professor D’Agostino brings her creativity and passion to trailblaze new initiatives and to serve in new roles as Founder and Director of the globally-recognized IP Osgoode, the award-winning, IPilogue, the IP Intensive, the IP Innovation Clinic, the first legal clinic of its kind helping inventors and start-ups across Canada and, more recently, founded the AI-powered IP Innovation ChatBot allowing underrepresented groups and the general public greater access to IP information.

She began her legal career as an Associate in a large Toronto law firm and was later recruited into the Canadian Government by the Recruitment of Policy Leaders (RPL) as a Senior Policy Analyst working on copyright policy. She serves on the Board of Directors of Alectra Inc. and Chairs its GRE&T Centre Advisory Committee advancing innovation and sustainable energy solutions. She held an Order in Council Appointment at the McMichael Canadian Art Collection where she served as Trustee, and currently sits on its Art Advisory Committee.

Professor D’Agostino is Co-Chair of the York University AI & Society Task Force, is appointed to the City of Vaughan Smart City Task Force and is a Senior Fellow at the Centre for International Governance Innovation (CIGI). She spent her last sabbatical as a Visiting Scholar at Stanford University. Prof D’Agostino is the recipient of various tri-council grants, honours and awards and is currently working on the second edition of Copyright Law (with Prof David Vaver, Irwin Law). Her peer-reviewed articles and her three books Copyright, Contract, Creators: New Media, New Rules, The Common Law of Intellectual Property: Essays in Honour of Professor David Vaver and Leading Legal Disruption: Artificial Intelligence and a Toolkit for Lawyers and the Law (with A Gaon and C Piovesan) are widely available.

She holds a Masters and Doctorate in Law (University of Oxford) with distinction, an LLB (Osgoode Hall Law School), an HonBA, summa cum laude, in English and Political Science and a specialization in French (York University), is an ICD.D from the Rotman School of Management, University of Toronto and is a member of the Law Society of Ontario (2001 call).

Should you be interested in working with Prof D’Agostino on any of her research projects, please feel free to get in touch with her directly at gdagostino@osgoode.yorku.ca

Research Interests: Intellectual Property, data governance & ownership, Innovation law & policy,  emerging technologies (ie Artificial Intelligence, IoT, robotics, 3D printing, Blockchain etc)

Craig, Carys J.

Dr. Carys Craig joined the faculty at Osgoode Hall Law School in 2002. She is the Academic Director of the Osgoode Professional Development LLM Program in Intellectual Property Law, a founding member of IP Osgoode (Osgoode’s Intellectual Property Law & Technology Program), and recently served as Osgoode’s Associate Dean (Research & Institutional Relations). In 2018, she held a MacCormick Research Fellowship at the University of Edinburgh.

A recipient of multiple teaching awards, including the 2015 President’s University-Wide Teaching Award, Dr. Craig teaches JD, graduate and professional courses in the areas of intellectual property, copyright and trademark law, and legal theory. She researches and publishes widely on intellectual property law and policy, with an emphasis on authorship (drawing on critical and feminist theory), users’ rights and the public domain. She is the author of Copyright, Communication & Culture: Towards a Relational Theory of Copyright Law (2011), and the co-editor of Trade-marks and Unfair Competition Law: Cases and Commentary, 2nd ed. (Toronto: Carswell, 2014) and Copyright: Cases and Commentary on the Canadian and International Law, 2nd ed. (Toronto: Carswell, 2013). Her award-winning work has been cited with approval by the Supreme Court of Canada.

Dr. Craig holds a First Class Honours Bachelor of Laws (LLB Hons) from the University of Edinburgh in Scotland, a Master of Laws (LLM) from Queen’s University in Kingston, and a Doctorate in Law (SJD) from the University of Toronto, where she was a graduate fellow of Ontario’s Centre for Innovation Law and Policy.