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Geertrui Van Overwalle

 

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E-mail: geertrui.vanoverwalle@law.kuleuven.be

Tel. 00 32 16 323736

Fax 00 32 16 323730

Curriculum vitae:

Geertrui Van Overwalle (°1958) studied law at the Katholieke Universiteit Brussel (K.U.Brussel, now H.U.B) and the Katholieke Universiteit Leuven (K.U.Leuven). She received her law degree (Master of Laws) in 1985 magna cum laude at the K.U.Leuven. In addition, she took a course of biotechnology at the Belgian Royal Society of Engineers in 1990.

Geertrui Van Overwalle joined the Centre for Intellectual Property Rights (CIR) at the Faculty of Law of the K.U.Leuven in 1991. In 1995, she obtained her Ph.D. with a dissertation on the 'Patentability of Plants'. In 1995 she became a post-doctoral researcher at the CIR at the K.U.Leuven.

 

At present Geertrui Van Overwalle is professor at the K.U.Leuven (Belgium) where she teaches Patent law in the Master of Laws Programme in the Faculty of Law. She also teaches Intellectual Property in the BioSciences and Patent Law and Human Genetic Inventions in the Master in Biomedical Sciences at the Faculty of Medicine. She is also a professor at the Université de Liège (Belgium) where she teaches Patent Law in the Advanced Master of European Law. In October 2008 she was also appointed as Research Professor of Patent Law and New Technologies at the Tilburg Institute for Law, Technology, and Society (TILT) at the University of Tilburg (in the Netherlands).
In 2003 she was a visiting professor at Monash University, Melbourne, where she lectured on ‘International Aspects of Patenting Inventions in Biotechnology’.

 

In her recent research, Geertrui Van Overwalle has focused on patents, genetics and their impact on access to health. The results of this research have been published in her book Gene Patents and Public Health, Brussels, Bruylant (2007) and in Gene Patents and Collaborative Licensing Mechanisms. Patent Pools, Clearinghouses, Open Source Models and Liability Regimes which was recently published by Cambridge University Press (2009).

Geertrui Van Overwalle is a member of the national Belgian High Council for Intellectual Property and of the Belgian Council for Bioethics. She is a member of the European Commission’s Expert Group on Biotechnological Inventions. She contributed as an expert to the Report Policy options for the improvement of the European patent system commissioned by the European Parliament. Recently she has also undertaken research for the European Group on Ethics in Science and New Technologies ( EGE ) and for the Japan Patent Office. In addition, she is a member of Standing Advisory Committee before the European Patent Office (SACEPO)  and of the Board of Appeal of the Community Plant Variety Office at Angers.

 

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