Nika Videtic was awarded a prize from an Oxford based law firm White & Black for best Queen Mary LLM essay in European and US Law of Patents.
(left to right) Professor Duncan Matthews. (QMIPRI), Nika Videtic (LLM student 2021-22), Tom Carver (Partner at White & Black). Photo via © Captis Imagery.
The inaugural prize was awarded to Nika Videtic (Intellectual Property LLM, 2022) for her essay analysing how exceptions and exclusions to patentability have evolved in European and U.S. legal systems. On 9 June 2022, Tom Carver of White & Black , a specialist IP, corporate and commercial law firm, awarded the prize to Nika in person during a ceremony at the Queen Mary Intellectual Property Research Institute (QMIPRI) Annual Conference, which took place at the Hon Society of Lincoln’s Inn in London. The White & Black essay prize will run for an initial period of three years and Professor Duncan Matthews, convener of the LLM European and US Law of Patents module, said ‘Queen Mary University of London is recognised internationally for excellence in IP law. We are extremely grateful to White & Black for its generous support and this recognition of our postgraduate students’ academic achievements’.
This is what Nika said about her studies at CCLS: ’My experience at QMUL over the past year opened up a new academic learning opportunity for me. I enjoyed engaging with different professors and intellectual property courses at CCLS. The variety of courses allowed me to apply my thinking from different industry perspectives and deepen my critical analysis. For instance, the European and United States Law of Patents was one of the courses I found particularly interesting because it prompted me to closely explore jurisdictional comparisons to patentability approaches from two different legal systems. Other courses were also very practically oriented, such as the Commercialisation course, which allowed me to consider different types of intellectual property rights from an asset management, transactional and licensing perspective.’
Nika further added some advice for our current students: ‘I think that the key to achieving the best outcome from your course is that you have to find yourself really enjoying it. You have to be willing to go deeper in your reading and account for different perspectives to achieve a reasoned and balanced viewpoint. Developing your own takeaway on your understanding of the topic is also a key component to help you become more engaged and expansive in your discussion. My experience at QLegal was further an invaluable opportunity to help me gain more confidence in client-centred lawyering skills and collaborating with different team members. Gaining real life client experience has helped me become more critical in my thinking and precise and analytical in my client writing.’