The ATRIP Essay Competition

• DOI: http://doi.org/10.1002/jwip.12008
• Date: 01 March 2013
• Published date: 01 March 2013
• Author: Jan Rosen,Graeme B. Dinwoodie

The ATRIP Essay Competition

This issue of the Journal contains the three best papers submitted by researchers in the annual Essay

Contest of the Association for Teachers and Researchers in Intellectual Property Law (ATRIP). ATRIP

was founded in 1981, the product of a vision shared by the leadership of the World Intellectual Property

Organisation and a group of leading intellectual property scholars from around the world. In the

succeeding thirty-two years, ATRIP has flourished, providing an ongoing forum for deliberation about

teaching and research in the field of intellectual property.

The ATRIP community has also grown in that time, in both numbers and geographic reach. The

vitality of the community depends upon welcoming new members as they enter and establish themselves

in the academy. In recent years, one of the conduits for bringing new ideas and new energy into the

Association has been the annual Essay Contest. The Contest was established by Gustavo Ghidini (then

President) in 2007, and has been organized and run since then by Jan Rose´n, President of ATRIP from

2009–11. It is open to scholars under 33 years of age. This year, once again, we received a large number of

submissions, reflecting the wide variety of research now being conducted in the field. The papers are

reviewed blind and ranked by the members of the Executive Committee. The author of the paper adjudged

to be the best is invited to speak at the next ATRIP Congress and to attend that Congress at ATRIP’s

expense. Since 2009 FICPI has generously supported the Contest by paying those expenses.

The top papers emanating from this process have typically been published online, on the ATRIP

website and (in 2012) in the online publication IP Theory. We are delighted that this year, Daniel Gervais,

the editor of the Journal of World Intellectual Property has agreed to publish the top essays, and these

are included in this issue of the Journal.

These essays (and indeed many who did not make the top three) demonstrate the excellent standards

of an ever rising number of young researchers in intellectual property law. The Contest, and this issue of

the Journal, celebrate this research, and bring it to a wider audience in pursuit of the objectives of the

Association.

Jan Rosen

Professor of Law

University of Stockholm

President, ATRIP (2009-11)

Graeme B. Dinwoodie

Professor of Intellectual Property and

Information Technology Law,

University of Oxford

President, ATRIP (2011-13)

©2013 John Wiley & Sons Ltd 1

The Journal of World Intellectual Property (2013) Vol. 16, no. 1–2, pp. 1

doi: 10.1111/j.1747-1796.2013.12008.x