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Professor Uma Suthersanen, LLB (Hons)[S’pore], LLM [Lond], PhD [Lond], Advocate and Solicitor (Singapore Bar), FRSA

Uma

Professor of Global Intellectual Property Law

Email: u.suthersanen@qmul.ac.uk
Telephone: +44 (0)20 7882 8081
Room Number: 1.4, Lincoln's Inn Fields

Profile

Professor Suthersanen holds a Chair in Global Intellectual Property Law and is the current Director of the Queen Mary Intellectual Property Research Institute. Uma was previously the Academic Director of the London Intellectual Property Law LLM (2012-2021), and the Paris Intellectual Property Law LLM (2012-2015). She was a member for the Law Unit of Assessment (sub-panel 18) for the national Research Excellence Framework, REF 2021.

Uma gained her degrees in law from the National University of Singapore and Queen Mary University of London. She began her academic career at Queen Mary first as the Herchel Smith Research Fellow, followed by the Financial Times Law & Tax Fellowship, before becoming a tenured lecturer in 2001. In 2009, she was conferred a Personal Chair at the Centre for Commercial Law Studies.

Uma has authored and edited the following leading texts: Copinger & Skone-James on Copyright (Nicholas Caddick K.C., Gwilym Harbottle & Uma Suthersanen, 18th Edition); and Dutfield & Suthersanen on Global Intellectual Property Law (Graham Dutfield & Uma Suthersanen, 2nd Edition). She is also the General Editor of Sweet & Maxwell’s European Copyright and Design Reports. She is currently working on a monograph on Copyright and Public Interest: Comparative and Historical Analyses (Gillian Davies & Uma Suthersanen, 3rd edition).

Her research encompasses legal, socio-economic, and comparative aspects of intellectual and intangible property. Professor Suthersanen has served as a consultant and given evidence to international and regional bodies including WIPO, UNESCO, UNCTAD, European Parliament, European Commission, and the Governments of Israel and Singapore. More recently, she has been invited to sit as a WIPO expert on the Ad hoc Committee on traditional knowledge and traditional cultural expressions, IGC 46, February 2023. She sits on the Executive Committee of the British Literary and Artistic Copyright Association (ALAI-UK), having previously been appointed as the first female Chair of ALAI-UK (2006-2010).

Uma’s works have been cited by, inter alia, the following organisations and governments: European Commission (Legal review on industrial design protection in Europe, 2016); OECD (The Innovation Policy Platform (IPP) (developed by the World Bank Group/OECD); Enquiries Into Intellectual Property’s Economic Impact, 2015); UNCTAD (Tool Box for Policy Coherence in Access to Medicines and Local Pharmaceutical Production 2017; Development Dimensions of Intellectual Property in Indonesia:Access to Medicines, Transfer of Technology and Competition, 2011; UNCTAD’s Least Developed Countries Report 2007); WIPO (Economic Research Working Paper No. 18, 2014; IGC on I.P. and Genetic Resources, Traditional Knowledge and Folklore, Note on the Meanings of the Term “Public Domain” in the Intellectual property System, 2010); WTO (Working Paper on Intellectual Property Rights Protection and Export Diversification: the Application of Utility Model Laws, 2014); Australian Government (Productivity Commission’s Report on Intellectual Property Arrangements 2016; IPAustralia Economic Research Paper 05, The economic impact of innovation patents, 2015; Advisory Council on I.P., Review of the Innovation Patent System (Final Report), 2015); Indian Government (Discussion Paper on Utility Models (DIPP, 2011).

Uma is a Visiting Professor on the WIPO Academy Joint LLM programmes with the (i) University of Ankara, and (ii) Shanghai International College of Intellectual Property-University of Tongji. She is also on the Visiting Faculty for the WIPO Academy programme with the British Copyright Council & UK Intellectual Property Office, and an Overseas Fellow of the I.P. Academy of Singapore.

She has been interviewed and quoted in various international media including The Telegraph, International Herald Tribune, The Guardian and BBC Radio 4 (Law in Action).

Before she decided to stop all that travelling, Uma accepted invitations to give guest lectures at several institutions located in amazing cities including: Universidade Católica Portuguesa, Lisbon; Hochschule für Wirtschaft und Recht Berlin; University of Alicante; Université Robert Schuman, Strasbourg; University of Western Ontario; University of Maastricht; Universidad Nacional de Colombia and Universidad Externado de Colombia, Bogota; Ss. Cyril and Methodius University, Macedonia; and University of Meiji-Waseda, Tokyo. And in USA: University of Washington, St. Louis; University of Boston; George Washington University, Washington.

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