Frantzeska Papadopoulou Skarp promoted to Professor of Intellectual Property Law

The Department of Law warmly congratulates Frantzeska Papadopoulou Skarp, who on 10 June 2021 was promoted to Professor of Intellectual Property Law at Stockholm University! We asked Frantzeska some questions to find out more about her academic career and research.

Frantzeska defended her PhD dissertation in 2014 at Stockholm University. The dissertation, entitled “Opening Pandora’s box”, deals with the protection of genetic resources and traditional knowledge from an intellectual property perspective.

Frantzeska, you began your law studies in France and have studied several master's programmes in Stockholm. As programme director of SULaw’s master's programme in European intellectual property law, you are educating international students. How does it feel?

- It's really fun and exciting! It feels fantastic to be the programme director of an LL.M. which you have attended yourself as a student the first time it was offered! I find it particularly enriching and stimulating to teach for international student groups. We lawyers sometimes think that law is national, that it may be enough to discuss issues with colleagues in the jurisdiction you yourself have the greatest connection to, but I don’t think that is true. There is so much to be gained from discussing issues with colleagues from other legal traditions. One suddenly looks at the legal field and at the issues from other perspectives.

You are one of the founders of the journal Stockholm Intellectual Property Law Review and also write for one of the highest ranked international intellectual property blog, ipkat.com. What do you find particularly captivating about intellectual property law?

- Oh, that’s a tough question… And that's probably what I think is so fascinating about intellectual property rights! The fact that there is always so much going on that is genuinely interesting and exciting, that it is a field of law that must quickly respond to societal, market and technological changes. To be able to teach and conduct research in intellectual property law, you need to "on top of things", you must follow new exciting AI applications, new art forms and new applications for genetic engineering. It is also an international and political area of law. These issues are dynamic!


You are coordinator for gender equality and equal treatment at SULaw and currently conduct research for a project that deals with gender issues in the film industry. Do you feel that equality and equal treatment is an area that needs to be explored more from a legal perspective?

- I definitely think so. The film project was the first of my research projects for which I used the so-called Law and Gender research method. You are often used to discussing equality and equal treatment as political goals, but much more forensic research is needed in this area. So far, research that applies a gender perspective to intellectual property rights shines with its absence and I hope that I will be able to contribute with useful research in that matter.

What are you up to next? Do you have any upcoming research projects, anything that may need to a publication, or maybe a planned research stay?

- Yes, immediately after the summer I will release a book though Hart Publishing about regulatory rights and pharmaceutical products. I’m also currently working on three new books originating in the film project I just mentioned. There is one book about copyright agreements, and two others that I am writing together with colleagues from film studies and which concern the film industry. I am also project manager in three new interdisciplinary research applications, so I keep my fingers crossed that one of them goes through. Research stay… Yes! I would definitely like to plan something like that. Maybe in 2022? 

 

 

Want to know more?

Read more about Franzeska Papadopoulou Skarp

Discover our LL.M. in European Intellectual Property Law