Committees

Maria Bottis is an Attorney-at-law and an Associate Professor, School of Information Science and Informatics, DALMS, Ionian University. She graduated from Arsakeion High School of Patras with High Honors (20/20 graduation certificate, first of class) and had been under full tuition scholarship throughout high school. In 1985, she topped the Greek National examinations for entrance in all Universities/all disciplines with 1998 points over 2000 and entered in Athens Law School first. She is a Honors graduate of Athens Law School (graduated first of class). She is a holder of a LL.M degree (Cambridge Law School UK) a LL.M degree from Yale Law School and a PhD on medical information law and ethics from the University of Athens. She was accepted by Harvard Law School for LLM studies in 1993. She was appointed Faculty Fellow at Harvard University, Center for Ethics and the Professions (2000-2001). She has been awarded scholarships from NATO, the Onassis Foundation, IKY (the Greek National Scholarships Foundation), the Rotary Club of Athens, the Yale Law School, Harvard and Clare Hall, Cambridge.

Marie-Christine Janssens is full professor at the KU Leuven where she teaches various courses in the sector of intellectual property rights at graduate and postgraduate level, including specialization courses in copyright and trademark law. She is Head of Unit of the KU Leuven Centre for IT & IP Law (CiTiP), with a team of over 40 researchers specialized in legal and ethical aspects of IT innovation and intellectual property. She studied law and history of arts at the University of Leuven (KU Leuven). After practicing law at the Brussels bar (1981-1989) and doing an internship at a Washington DC based law firm (1985-1986), she completed her PhD in intellectual property as researcher at the KU Leuven under the supervision of Frank Gotzen (1996). Since 2007, she is President of the Belgian Council for Intellectual Property Rights, section Copyright and Neighbouring Rights (Ministry of Economic Affairs) and vice-president of the Belgian group of ALAI. Topics that she specialized on include European Trademark Law, Harmonisation of copyright norms in the EU, Exceptions to copyright, Moral rights, Open access-source-data, Orphan works, Software protection, Employee inventions, Inventions at universities, IP enforcement and private international law.

Nikos Koutras is a postdoctoral research fellow at the University of Antwerp, Research Group Government & Law. He studied political science at the University of Crete. He holds a master’s in science of Information at the Ionian University. He also holds a PhD in Political Science (Ionian University, Greece) and a PhD in Law (Macquarie University, Australia). He has been awarded full scholarship for his second PhD research fellowship from Macquarie University and also received the Macquarie University Postgraduate Research scholarship. Additionally, he was awarded an Erasmus International scholarship for research visit at the University of Trento (Faculty of Law) and a research grant from the University of Antwerp for ACTORE short research visit. Recently, he was awarded another research grant from the Research Council of the University of Antwerp for a small research project which allows him to prepare and initiate his postdoctoral research project.

Esther van Zimmeren is a Research Professor in Intellectual Property (IP) Law & Governance at the Faculty of Law of the University of Antwerp (UAntwerp). She teaches intellectual property law and EU internal market law. She is also Module Coordinator of the UAntwerp LL.M. Program – Module Law & International Business and Permanent Visiting Professor at the University of Copenhagen. She currently leads a team of 8 PhD researchers and 2 postdoctoral researchers. Before her appointment at the University of Antwerp, she worked as an assistant professor at the University of Liège (2011-2013) and as a research fellow at the Centre for Intellectual Property Rights of the KU Leuven (2004-2013). Between 2002-2004 she was a legal assistant at the General Court of the EU in Luxembourg. She has particular expertise in patent law, IP governance, innovation policy, technology transfer, competition law, European institutional and internal market law and international trade law. Her research is mostly interdisciplinary. She has been a visiting scholar to various prominent universities and research institutes around the world, including the University of Copenhagen (2017); Duke University (2013); Gakushuin University in Tokyo (2013); Hanken Business School in Helsinki (2012); the Brocher Foundation in Geneva (2011); the University of California, Berkeley (2008) and the Institute of Intellectual Property in Tokyo (2008).

Hendrik Vanhees is professor at the law faculty of the University of Antwerp and at the law faculty of the University of Gent. He teaches courses on intellectual property in both faculties. He also teaches courses on commercial and economic law in other faculties. His research is focused on intellectual property rights. He has written books and articles on different aspects of intellectual property rights. Professor Vanhees is editor of the International Encyclopaedia of Intellectual Property. He is member of the board of the Belgian Association for Copyright Law. He is also member of the Council for Intellectual Property, the advisory body to the Minister of Economic Affairs concerning intellectual property rights. He is (co-)promoter of a number of PhD research projects on different aspects of intellectual property law.