Kent Law School academic Dr Jose Bellido has been awarded a British Academy Mid-Career Fellowship for a new research project called Intellectual Property in a Decolonising World (1945-1968).
Here is a summary of the project:
Science and culture are regulated by international law with responsibility shared between two major international agencies of the United Nations: the UN Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organisation (UNESCO) and the World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO). UNESCO’s remit is very broad, encompassing education, economic development, heritage, and more recently, open science. WIPO is primarily focused on protection of private economic rights, with the agency playing a central role in securing international patent and trade mark registration and an impactful role in setting minimum standards for global copyright. There has been no significant study of how and why distinctive UNESCO and WIPO demarcations of responsibility arose in the twentieth century and how this coincided with independence and decolonisation movements in Africa and Asia. This project will provide the first monograph exploring the tensions that emerged from trying to reconcile Post WW2 humanitarian aspirations of nation states with international intellectual property protection.
Dr Bellido is particularly interested in the history of intellectual property law and has additional research interests in legal theory, evidence, and legal history. At Kent, he teaches on undergraduate and postgraduate modules relating to intellectual property. He is is happy to supervise research students in the areas of intellectual property law, breach of confidence and defamation.