Knowledge and Intellectual Resources

The research group Knowledge and Intellectual Resources conducts research driven by the digital knowledge society and the impact it has on law and the legal regimes. Our work is in the fields of intellectual property law, legal theory and innovation law.

We have a strong tradition of actively promoting research utilisation and striving towards practical societal impact through application of research results. We work directly with the intellectual property driven industries and public sector partners in order to developed tools for application of e.g. open innovation networks and commons. Currently we are actively exploring Artificial Intelligence as a societal challenge/phenomenon and the role of law in such a context (see GAIa web page). As founding members of the Centre for Intellectual Property (CIP) we collaborate with both the private and the public sector on various projects, which gives us a privileged position to test, utilise and implement our research findings. (see also CIP FORUM).

The work that is conducted within the research group spans over a number of legal fields such as intellectual property law, art law, public law, contract law, labour law, private and public international law, EU-law, etc. The research group focuses particularly on themes such as commons, open innovation, public domain and allocation and management of intellectual resources. It has a strong theoretical commitment, as well as a trans- and interdisciplinary ambition.

All our work is directly connected to the UN sustainable development goals (SDGs) particularly number 9 (Industry Innovation and Infrastructure) and 16 (Peace, Justice and Strong Institutions). We have recently also actively focused on goal number 5 (Gender Equality).

We are stake-holders in an inter-disciplinary masters programme called Intellectual Capital Management (ICM) as well as directors of various intellectual property law related courses on the undergraduate and advanced levels at the Department of Law. We are also involved in the teaching and consulting on the matters of intellectual property law for external clients such as law firms.

Gender, diversity and equality in IP law
One of the prioritised goals for the group that we are currently actively advancing is increased equality and diversity within the fields of innovation, entrepreneurship, and intellectual property. These goals guide our programmes and activities. Here we focus particularly on UN Sustainable Development Goals number 5 (Gender Equality) and 9 (Industry Innovation and Infrastructure). Another field of interest within our group has been the elimination of segregation and we have been working towards an equal opportunity based city life. We conduct for instance lecture series that focus on issues of exclusion, discrimination and lack of equality in the city.

We want to increase the interest for gender equality in IP and we focus specifically on strengthening young female students towards becoming future leaders of IP law. As a result we have developed a new platform – the so called “Vera Project” (named after Vera Sandberg, the first female civil engineer in Sweden that graduated in 1917). The platform works towards an interdisciplinary and critical research programme where gender, equality and diversity in IP are put to the fore.