Professor Delivers Inaugral lecture

victoria-university-of-wellington

Fri Mar 06 2009 13:00:00 GMT+1300 (New Zealand Daylight Time)

Professor Delivers Inaugral lecture

Friday, 6 March 2009, 1:48 pm
Press Release: Victoria University of Wellington

Attached and pasted below, is a media release detailing the inaugural professorial lecture of Professor Susy Frankel from Victoria University’s School of Law.

Victoria University’s first female law graduate to be appointed a Professor of Law at Victoria gives her inaugural professorial lecture the day after Barbie turns 50. The enduring doll plays a significant part in the lecture’s theme.

Professor Susy Frankel will examine the relationship between intellectual property and culture in the lecture on Tuesday, which is titled “From Barbie to Renior: Intellectual Property and Culture”.

“Since the beginning of intellectual property law, competing interests have stretched the law. Barbie now has more protection against rip-offs than a classic artist like Renoir could have imagined,” she says.

Professor Frankel will ask whether the law has swung too far in providing undue protection for some creative work.

“Do Mattel (the manufacturers of Barbie) need such a high level of intellectual property protection in order to encourage the development of creative work? I certainly wouldn’t say they need no protection—but where do you draw the line?”

She says a mishmash of justifications, including encouraging creativity and developing culture, has shaped the law, and her lecture will explore whether protection unduly restricts other cultural values, such as parody and satire.

“Intellectual property law is designed to encourage works of culture. The theory is you reward creators of work in order that they benefit and are encouraged to produce more. But how much protection you give to achieve that is a balancing act.”

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She says if the law overreaches it runs the risk of determining the works of culture that people develop—rather than merely acting as a support for them.

Victoria University Vice-Chancellor Professor Pat Walsh says Professor Frankel is an outstanding researcher, teacher, and leader.

“This appointment is significant for a number of reasons, not least of which is that Professor Frankel is only the second female professor from Victoria’s Law School, and the first female LLB graduate from Victoria to become a professor here.”

Professor Walsh says Victoria’s Inaugural Lecture series is an opportunity for new professors to provide family, friends, colleagues and the wider community with an insight to their specialist area of study.

“It is also an opportunity for the University to celebrate and acknowledge our valued professors.”

Professor Frankel graduated from Victoria’s Faculty of Law with an Honours degree in 1988. She then practised law in New Zealand and London before returning to academic study, completing an LLM at the University of London in 1993. A further period of professional practice followed in New Zealand before she was appointed Lecturer in 1997, Senior Lecturer in 1998 and Associate Professor in 2004.

She is co-director of the New Zealand Centre of International Economic Law, Chair of the Copyright Tribunal, and recently completed a Clare Hall Visitor Fellowship at the University of Cambridge.

The public lecture is at 6pm in the Hunter Council Chamber, on Kelburn Parade on Tuesday 10 March 2009. To RSVP, please email rsvp@vuw.ac.nz with ‘Frankel’ in the subject line.

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