Profile
Jonathan Griffiths is Professor of Intellectual Property Law. His main research interests are in copyright law (particularly United Kingdom, European and comparative copyright law) and in the relationship between intellectual property law and fundamental rights. He has written widely in both of these areas. With Professor Tuomas Mylly, he edited Global Intellectual Property Protection and New Constitutionalism: Hedging Exclusive Rights (OUP:2021).
His current work is focused on (i) the concept of property in intellectual property law (particularly in copyright and unregistered trade mark law) and (ii) the relationship between freedom of expression and trade mark law.
He is the editor of the “United Kingdom” chapter of the leading international treatise on "International Copyright Law & Practice" (ed B Ong) and is a member of the editorial/advisory boards of the Journal of Media Law, the Media & Arts Law Review and the Nottingham Law Journal.
He is interested in copyright policy and reform and has been consulted on copyright policy by a number of public bodies. He is a member of the European Copyright Society, a group of scholars founded with the aim of creating a platform for critical and independent scholarly thinking on European copyright law. The Society has published several widely-read policy proposals.
Research
His current work focuses on (1) historical shifts in the nature of the concept of property in intellectual property law –particularly in relation to copyright and unregistered trade mark law and (2) the relationship between freedom of expression and trade mark registration.
Publications
Many of Jonathan Griffiths' publications are available on SSRN.
- “Comment of the European Copyright Society Addressing Selected Aspects of the Implementation of Articles 3-7 of Directive 2019/790 on Copyright in the Digital Single Market”, [2023] GRUR International 22-36 (with T Synodinou & R Xalabarder)
- Global Intellectual Property Protection and the New Constitutionalism: Hedging Exclusive Rights, ed with T Mylly, Oxford University Press, 2021
- “European Copyright Law & the Charter of Fundamental Rights – Advocate General Szpunar’s Opinion in (C-469/17) Funke Medien, (C-476/17 Pelham GmbH and (C-516/17) Spiegel Online” [2019] ERA Forum 1-16
- “Sound sampling – a permitted use under EU copyright law? Opinion of the European copyright Society in relation to the pending reference before the CJEU in Case C-476/17, Pelham GmbH v Hütter” [2019] International Review of Intellectual Property & Competition Law 467-490
- “Universalism, pluralism or isolationism? – the relationship between authors’ rights and creators’ human rights” in T Synodinou (ed) Pluralism or universalism in international copyright law? (Wolters Kluwer, 2019) 619-640
- “Taking power tools to the acquis - The Court of Justice, the Charter of Fundamental Rights and EU copyright law” in C Geiger (ed) Intellectual Property & the Judiciary (Edward Elgar, 2018)
- “The tobacco industry’s challenge to the United Kingdom’s standardised packaging legislation – global lessons for tobacco control policy?” in Vol 17(2) (2017) Special Issue on Plain Packaging of Tobacco Products, Queensland University of Technology Law Review 66-82
- ‘Fair dealing after Deckmyn – the United Kingdom’s defence for caricature, parody & pastiche’ in M Richardson & S Ricketson, Research Handbook on Intellectual Property in Media and Entertainment (Edward Elgar, 2017) 64-101
- ‘Moral Right from a Copyright Perspective’ in Moral Rights in the 21st Century in F Brison et al (eds), (Larcier, 2015)
- Proposals from Berlin & Paris – intermediary liability in European copyright law’, [2016] Journal of IP, IT and eCommerce (JIPITEC) 70
- ‘Exhaustion and the alteration of copyright works in EU copyright law – (C-419/13) Art & Allposters International BV v Stichting Pictoright’ [2016] ERA Forum 1
- ‘“On the back of a cigarette packet” – standardised packaging legislation and the tobacco industry’s fundamental right to (intellectual) property’ [2015] Intellectual Property Quarterly 343
Supervision
Jonathan Griffiths welcomes proposals for supervision in his areas of research interest; particularly on copyright law, on the relationship between intellectual property rights and constitutional norms or fundamental rights and on law and creative culture more generally.
