Herchel Smith Professor of Intellectual Property Law
Queen Mary, University of London
BA (Hons 1), MA, PGDip App Sci (Ethology) (High Distinction), JD (Dean’s Honour Roll) (University of Queensland), PhD (Edinburgh)
Johanna Gibson is Herchel Smith Professor of Intellectual Property Law at the Centre for Commercial Law Studies (CCLS) and Editor-In-Chief of the Queen Mary Journal of Intellectual Property (QMJIP). She has consulted widely to industry, government, NGOs and practitioners, and has been a visiting professor to institutions around the world, including the Queensland University of Technology (Australia), Monash University (Australia), the University of Toronto (Canada), and the Institute of Musical Research (School of Advanced Studies, UK). Johanna’s research interests are in intellectual property and the creative industries, particularly fashion and film, and in animal law, drawing upon critical animal studies and ethology. She graduated summa cum laude (top honours) in Arts, Science, and Law.
Research
Johanna has research interests in the creative industries, particularly fashion and film, and animal behaviour and welfare law and policy. She has a research and education background in cultural studies, critical theory, film, art history and law, as well as in animal behaviour science and welfare. Throughout her research and teaching, Johanna maintains interdisciplinary interests and publications. She is presently working on a monograph, Intellectual Property and the Sensational Law of Film (Elgar, forthcoming), which takes a phenomenal approach to intellectual property through film theory and scholarship. The Logic of Innovation (2014) explores the complex terrain of creativity, ownership and use in the digital environment. Her earlier book on the relationship between intellectual property systems, protection and the narration of culture and innovation, Creating Selves: Intellectual Property and the Narration of Culture (2006), was cited with approval in an independent government review of intellectual property. Community Resources (2005) examines traditional knowledge and intellectual property, advancing theories of community and authority in a comprehensive approach to cultural integrity, indigeneity and tradition. Intellectual Property, Medicine and Health (2017/2009), now in its second edition, remains a comprehensive account of the range of issues raised through the interactions between patents, access to knowledge, development and health, including an understanding of the important links between culture, participation, human rights and health. Her latest book, Owned, an Ethological Jurisprudence of Property: From the Cave to the Commons (2019) draws upon domestication science and cognitive ethology to provide a radical revision to the development of property and contemporary perspectives and is the first instalment of a trilogy on her theory of ethological jurisprudence, an original approach through communication and sociability in property and intellectual property. The second, Wanted, More Than Human Intellectual Property, applies this theory to authorship and innovation, and will be published in 2021. The third, Made, the Nature of Intellectual Property, will be available in 2022. Johanna is also the editor of Patenting Lives: Life Patents, Culture and Development (2008), the collection of papers arising from her AHRC project and international conference of the same name.
Johanna is also actively researching and publishing in animal law and welfare and has been appointed legal expert to the Home Office Animals in Science Committee, the advisory non-departmental public body advising the Secretary of State on all matters concerning the use of animals in scientific procedures. Johanna’s research in animals and the law focuses on animal welfare and public engagement, including novel and interdisciplinary modes of dissemination and policy impact, as well as the relevance of behaviour science in development and implementation of law and policy. Part of this research includes the examination of sentience, intentionality, and innovation in ethology and law, providing insight into theories of personhood and other-than-human authorship, including artificial intelligence. Johanna has also devised LLM modules in Animal Law at Queen Mary, University of London, making the QMUL School of Law the first in the UK to offer Animal Law as part of its formal postgraduate degree.
Johanna is a member of the Society of Legal Scholars (SLS), the Socio-Legal Studies Association (SLSA), and the British Literary and Artistic Copyright Association (BLACA). Johanna is also a member of the Association for the Studies of Animal Behaviour (ASAB), the Universities Federation for Animal Welfare (UFAW), the International Society for Anthrozoology (ISAZ), and the International Society for Applied Ethology (ISAE). Along with the humans, Johanna shares her home with four rescue dogs and four rescue cats.
Publications and Media
Johanna has published extensively in the fields of intellectual property, critical theory, and animal studies, is series editor for Intellectual Property, Theory, Culture (Routledge) and series co-editor (with Trevor Cook) for Intellectual Property: Practitioner Series (Edward Elgar Publishing), and has held numerous research council grants and private research consultancies across a range of issues and areas in intellectual property, consumer behaviour and welfare. She has considerable media experience across television, radio and newspapers, including interviews with BBC World Service, CNBC, BBC Radio 4, Wall Street Journal, The Guardian, The Times, WIRED and Vice.
Johanna was formerly Director of the Queen Mary Intellectual Property Research Institute (QMIPRI) 2007-2014 and Director of the Intellectual Property Institute (2010-2013). Before joining CCLS, Johanna practised law at Allens (now Allens Linklaters) in Melbourne, Australia, specialising in Intellectual Property, Media and Communications Law and Competition Law.
Consultancies
Johanna has led a major research consultancy for the Authors’ Licensing and Collecting Society (ALCS) on authors’ earnings (pre-launched as “What Are Words Worth Now” in the House of Commons in 2014) which has received considerable international press. Her major report to the IPO on Lookalikes (co-authored with Phillip Johnson and Jonathan Freeman) was cited in Parliament during debates on the Intellectual Property Act 2014 and led to a major consultation by the UK Government. Johanna was also a member and lead author of the expert working group assembled by the European Commission’s Directorate-General for Research and Innovation to report on International Knowledge Transfer.
Johanna was also supported by an AHRC grant to examine patents and biotechnology in the research project, Patenting Lives, including the ethics of animal species and integrity in the context of biotechnology research. The project culminated in an international conference, with selected papers being included in the edited collection Patenting Lives: Life Patents, Culture and Development (2008) and this research contributed towards the monograph, Intellectual Property, Medicine and Health (2009), which Johanna has recently revised as a second edition, published 2017.