Silke von Lewinski, Senior Research Fellow at the Institute, has been appointed as Associate Professor at the Faculty of Law at the University of Zagreb. Her research and teaching focuses on European, international and comparative copyright law, including challenges of new technologies. She will continue working at the Max Planck Institute for Innovation and Competition in Munich as well.
Silke von Lewinski is the author and co-author of several reference works, including the monograph “International Copyright Law and Policy” (Oxford/OUP 2008, Chinese edn. 2017) and the commentaries “European Copyright Law: A Commentary” (with Walter, Oxford/OUP 2010) and “The WIPO Treaties on Copyright” (with Reinbothe, Oxford/OUP, 2nd ed. 2015). Her numerous publications have appeared in more than 15 languages. She is also President of ALAI (Association Littéraire et Artistique Internationale) Germany and Vice President of ALAI.
In addition to teaching at the Munich Intellectual Property Law Center (MIPLC), she has frequently held visiting professorships and other teaching positions, inter alia at the universities of Paris (Panthéon-Sorbonne, Sud), Toulouse, Madrid, Québec, Montreal, Melbourne, Wuhan and Beijing. She was the First Walter Minton Visiting Scholar at Columbia University School of Law in New York, the First Distinguished Visitor to the IP Research Institute of Australia and The Hosier Distinguished Visiting IP Scholar at DePaul University in Chicago.
As a legal expert to the European Commission, she drafted the Rental Right Directive’s proposal and was a member of the EC delegation at the WIPO Diplomatic Conference 1996 (outcome: WCT, WPPT). At the WIPO Diplomatic Conferences 2012 (outcome: Beijing Treaty) and 2013 (outcome: Marrakesh Treaty), she was Deputy Head of Delegation for Germany. Starting in 1995, she was chief legal expert to governments of Eastern and Central European and former Soviet countries on their copyright legislation. In particular, in 2003, she advised the Croatian government on copyright to pave the way for accession to the EU.