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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 of IP Law at the K.U.Leuven (Belgium) and 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 recently started a multidisciplinary research project on Open Innovation: The Interaction between Legal Architectures & Innovation Strategies together with fellow economists from Leuven University

Geertrui Van Overwalle is president of the European Policy for Intellectual Property (EPIP) research network. She is a member of the European Commission’s Expert Group on Biotechnological Inventions. She is also a member of the Economic and Scientific Advisory Board of the European Patent Office and of the Scientific Advisory Board (Fachbeirat) of the Max-Planck-Institute for Intellectual Property and Competition Law. 
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. She was also an external advisor to the Unitaid Medicines Patent Pool Initiative. 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. She is also a member of the national Belgian High Council for Intellectual Property.

 

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