Professor Julian Kinderlerer took up his appointment as the Department of Science and Technology Chair in IP Law and leads the Unit. Julian is also a Professor of Biotechnology & Society at the Technology University in Delft, The Netherlands, former Director of the Sheffield Institute of Biotechnology Law and Ethics and honorary Professor of Biotechnology Law at the University of Sheffield in the UK. He is a member of the European Group on Ethics in Science and New Technologies that reports to the European Commission, Council and Parliament on ethical issues. He is also a member of the South African Nanotechnology Ethics committee. In 2000 he was seconded to the United Nations Environment Programme to design and implement a project designed to assist developing countries develop their regulatory system to comply with the Cartagena Protocol on Biosafety that eventually involved over 130 countries. He has also acted as the Specialist Adviser to a House of Lords Select Committee on European Agriculture and modern Biotechnology.
Djims Milius is Senior Research Officer for the Unit. Djims was born in Gonaïves, Haiti and holds post-graduate degrees from Canada and the United Kingdom. Djims supports the work of the Intellectual Property Law & Policy Research Unit in the Department of Private Law at UCT through teaching and research. His primary area of research is intellectual property (IP) law and development policy. IP, as defined by William Cornish, describes the set of marketing devices and related instruments that capture and reward original ideas and other artistic creations of the mind. Research for development policy is approached in broad terms and includes Amartya K. Sen’s concept of ‘development as freedom’. His research explores the tensions and opportunities arising from our understanding of tradition, innovation and modernity.
Dr Tobias Schonwetter is a post-doctoral research fellow. Tobias studied and practiced law in Germany and San Francisco, U.S.A. and holds Ph.D. and LL.M. (with distinction) degrees from UCT. He specialises on copyright-related issues. Tobias is the legal lead of Creative Commons South Africa as well as a country lead researcher and one of the Principal Investigators for the African Copyright and Access to Knowledge (ACA2K) project. In addition, he is involved in a number of IP-related projects and research collaborations, for instance with Yale University, the American University in Washington D.C. and the Shuttleworth Foundation in South Africa. Tobias has written numerous articles on copyright law and has spoken at various national as well as international conferences. Tobias is a member of the Commonwealth of Learning’s (COL) copyright expert group and manages the law faculty’s digital repository ‘lawspace’.
Dr Johanna von Braun is a post-doctoral research fellow. Johanna works on Intellectual Property Rights (IPR) and Development. Within this field, she focuses primarily on issues related to genetic resources and the related rights of local and indigenous communities, as well as public health and access to medicines. Johanna has extensive work experience in a range of civil society organisations in the area of IPRs, trade and sustainable development, most recently with the International Centre for Trade and Sustainable Development, where she was part of the UNCTAD-ICTSD Program on IPRs and Sustainable Development. Upon arriving in South Africa, Johanna has started collaborating closely with Natural Justice, a South African legal non-profit organisation that works on the implementation of the Convention on Biological Diversity in Southern Africa. She also continues to work as a consultant for different UN and civil society organisations on access to medicines. Johanna has a BA Hons from the University of Sussex in International Relations and Development Studies, a Master in International Affairs from Columbia University, New York, and a PhD in Law from Queen Mary College’s Centre for Commercial Law, University of London. Johanna teaches a course on IP and Development.
Dr Bernard Maister is a post-doctoral researcher. He has a medical degree from UCT (MB ChB) having specialised in paediatric neurology. He studied for a law degree in New York and specialised in patent law. He has attained the J.D. and and LL.M degrees.
Andrew Rens (currently at the Duke Law School, U.S.). Andrew Rens thinks and writes about the interaction of law, knowledge and innovation, and blogs his thoughts at aliquidnovi. At the Unit, Andrew taught a Master’s course in Telecommunications Law. Andrew has worked in academia, private practise and the non profit sector. He was the founding Legal Lead of Creative Commons South Africa, a co-founder and former director of The African Commons Project, a charter member and director of Freedom to Innovate South Africa ,a fellow at the Stanford Center for Internet and Society , and a research associate at the LINK Center at the School of Public and Development Management, University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg. Andrew qualified as an attorney in South Africa, and was awarded a Master of Laws from the Law School at the University of the Witwatersrand where he where he subsequently taught Master’s courses in Intellectual Property, Telecommunications, Broadcasting, Space and Satellite, and Media and Information Technology Law, before spending several years in San Francisco, California. Andrew completed a three year fellowship as the Intellectual Property Fellow at the Shuttleworth Foundation.
Eve Gray. Eve is an Honorary Research Associate in the Centre for Educational Technology at the University of Cape Town. With a background in academic publishing, she brings to her promotion of Access to Knowledge an awareness of the value of the professional skills that publishers contribute knowledge dissemination and their understanding of the strategic importance of effective dissemination. Eve also sees the potential for digital media to transcend both the limitations of the traditional publishing models in the global South and the knowledge barriers that face the developing world. In 2006-7 Eve was an International Policy Fellow of the Open Society Institute, Budapest, in the Open Information Working Group. She has worked in a number of projects relating to access to and participation in the communication and publication of African research. She is currently the Project Lead for the Scholarly Communication in Africa Programme, a four-country project funded by the IDRC. Her major role in the project relates to policy development for scholarly communications at institutional and national level in the participating countries, working in partnership with the Southern African Regional Universities Association (SARUA).
Eve is a member of the Committee on Scholarly Publishing of the Academy of Science of South Africa, which is responsible for the implementation of a government-funded open access scholarly publishing journal programme in South Africa, in collaboration with SciELO in Brazil. She is a Trustee of the Electronic Publishing Trust, a UK-based Trust, which works with developing country scientists and publishers to improve access to the world’s research literature and to raise the visibility of research findings published in developing countries.
Eve blogs here.
Dr Debbie Collier. After obtaining an LLB degree, Debbie completed pupillage and later articles and practiced as an attorney in the Eastern Cape, specialising in Labour, Electronic and Property Law until 2001 when she joined the UCT Law Faculty as an assistant lecturer and IT co-ordinator. Debbie is currently a Senior Lecturer in the Commercial Law Department and Deputy Director of the Institute of Development and Labour Law (IDLL). She is an active member of the editorial board of the Development and Labour Monograph Series, an IDLL publication and an associate of the Labour and Enterprise Project. She is involved in the teaching of undergraduate and postgraduate law students, as well as students outside of the Law Faculty in the areas of Labour Law, Electronic Law, Intellectual Property Law, Biotechnology Law and Business Law. Debbie’s research interests lie in the broad areas of Electronic law, Labour law and Property, specifically Intellectual Property Law, and, more recently, the regulation of agriculture, in particular focussing on the regulation of agricultural biotechnology and the role of intellectual property law in agricultural biotechnology. Debbie obtained a PhD, from the University of Cape Town, in this area of law in 2010.
Dr Caroline Ncubewas appointed as a lecturer in the Department of Commercial Law in January 2005. Before that she lectured at the University of Limpopo (formerly University of the North) and the University of Zimbabwe. Prior to embarking on an academic career, she practiced as an attorney and conveyancer with Coghlan, Welsh and Guest, in Harare Zimbabwe. Caroline obtained her LLB from the University of Zimbabwe and her LLM from the University of Cambridge where she majored in Intellectual Property Law and Company Law. She obtained her PhD in Intellectual Property Law from the University of Cape Town. Her other research interests include E-law and the use of ICTs in legal teaching. Caroline plays an active role in various professional associations and served as the developing country co-chair of the World IT Forum’s commission on social, legal and ethical aspects in 2007.She is often invited to give lectures and seminars in Intellectual Property to various constituencies including WIPO Summer School students and librarians. Caroline is also actively involved in research projects that focus on open development, access to knowledge and the promotion of a balanced approach to IP.
Project websites
The African Copyright and Access to Knowledge (ACA2K) project http://www.aca2k.org/
The Open African Innovation Research and Training (Open A.I.R.) project http://www.openair.org.za/
Lee-Ann Tong. Lee-Ann is a lecturer of the Law of Succession and also lectures on Intellectual Property Law. She coordinates the Intellectual Property Law Research Focus Group. Her research interests revolve broadly around aspects around intellectual property law.
Donrich Jordaan is a Research Associate in the IP Unit. He is working on a PhD within the IP Unit and is the co-founder and managing director Sylvean Biotech (Pty) Ltd and of Trydian Interactive (Pty) Ltd. He graduated from Pretoria University having attained a Bachelor in Civil Law in 1995, an LLB in 1998 and the Masters degree in Political Policy Studies (cum laude) in 2002. He was admitted to the Pretoria Bar in 2002. He is a director of AfricaBio and a member of the Council and Senate of Pretoria University.
Professor Jocelyn Webster is a Research Associate in the IP Unit. She is a Professor at Tshwane University and the Managing Director of AfricaBio. AfricaBio is a non-political, non-profit biotechnology association for the safe, ethical and responsible research, development and application of biotechnology and its products. The Association also serves as a forum for informed dialogue on biotechnological issues in Africa.
In addition:
- Charles Moitui is a research student in the Unit
- Madelein Kleyn (van der Merwe) is completing her PhD
- Wim Anders
