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Innovation Law (LAW-RT-INNLAW-25)

LAW-RT-INNLAW-25

Purpose

 

Description

Overview
Technological innovation is essential for optimizing production processes, enhancing quality of life and economic welfare, ensuring a high level of environmental protection, and maintaining geostrategic security. However, technological innovation also poses risks relating to tectonic shifts in labour markets and unemployment, risks to human physical and mental health, and challenges to criminal law enforcement, among others. Against that background, the introductory course “Innovation Law” is divided into four sessions that explore a cluster of questions:

Session 1: Promoting Innovation – a Legal Perspective 
First, how does the legal system promote innovation? The phrase ‘legal system’ refers to the body of laws that directly impact the innovation process: intellectual property (patents, copyright, trade secret laws), antitrust, labour laws, tax laws, data protection laws, and risk regulation. The entire first session of the course is accordingly devoted to connecting the dots of what would be later referred to as “innovation law”.

Session 2: Regulatory Overlaps and Regulatory Tensions 
In its second session, the seminar explores the interface between different branches of innovation law. The fundamental questions we seek to explore include: Are there conflicts or tensions between different legal regimes? How are such situations resolved? Does a particular regime take precedence over the other(s)? If so, what drives these policy choices? The session further seeks to decipher how innovation law mitigates risks, such as those stemming from AI, pharmaceuticals, digital platforms, and autonomous vehicles.
The third and fourth seminar sessions are designed with a practical focus and examine two case studies in which innovation is paramount. The first field is artificial intelligence (AI), and the second is biopharmaceuticals.

Session 3: Copyright Law in an Algorithmically Challenged World 
On artificial intelligence, the session will begin by examining the different theories that justify copyright protection and their implications in cases where the interests of AI developers and copyright holders are in tension. In the later part of the session, it will consider whether a particular theory is preferred over another in redistributing entitlements among the stakeholders. Finally, the session will consider the overall implications of choice of one theory over the others for AI innovation process.

Session 4: The Biotech Revolution and the Law 
Finally, in the fourth session, the seminar will explore the history of medical biotechnology, and how the interplay between specific regulatory preferences and scientific uncertainty shaped the biopharmaceutical industry in the form in which we know it today.

The seminar is intended to be of practical relevance to researchers working in diverse areas of legal regulation, especially to those interested in the broad topic of technological change.

Course reading list: https://readinglist.eui.eu/leganto/public/39EUI_INST/lists/2942224080008406?auth=SAML&idpCode=SAML_LEGANTO

First, Second & Third Term: registration from 22 to 26 September 2025

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