"I would recommend QMUL and the IP LLM to students and professionals from all over the world. This course provided me with the tools to understand the international legal framework related to IP."
Year of Graduation: 2020Name of programme: LLM in Intellectual Property Law Country: Colombia
My choice of university, LLM and modules was influenced by my experience in Colombia as a Legal Counsel, university professor and Associate working in Intellectual Property (IP), Commercial and Corporate matters. I was searching for a programme and a university where students could design their own course and combine modules of all areas of IP.
An advantage of studying the IP LLM at Queen Mary University of London (QMUL) is that it offers an international and comparative module, where I learnt about diverse legal systems in all the lectures I attended. I found this extremely valuable because it allowed me to open my legal knowledge and have analytical skills not only in international law, but also in multiple jurisdictions. I attended the modules of International and Comparative Copyright, International and Comparative Law of Patents, Digital IP, Trade Secrets and IP and the Creative Industries where we studied US, UK, EU, Germany and France legal systems, among others.
Furthermore, the IP LLM offers very specialised and unique modules, such as Agriculture Trade and IP, Music Industry Contracts and IP and the Life Sciences. The possibility to attend these specialised courses, only taught in this IP LLM, allowed me to learn from a wide variety of very specific topics. Indeed, the Agriculture Trade and IP and the IP and the Life Sciences modules guided and inspired my dissertation topic, Traditional Knowledge (TK) associated with genetic resources. There I proposed the facts for a legislative Colombian agenda, considering the mechanism of Access and Benefit Sharing along with the creation of a database of TK and a national authority, as the most suitable form of protection. I considered elements of the Peruvian Law and the Nagoya Protocol, that could respond to the need to reward the contribution of the Indigenous communities in the exploitation of genetic resources.
I would recommend QMUL and the IP LLM to students and professionals from all over the world. This course provided me with the tools to understand the international legal framework related to IP. This developed and enhanced my key legal analytical skills to understand international cases, due to the fact that the lectures and assessments were practical real cases regarding multiple jurisdictions.