Speaker: Dr Svitlana Lebedenko, Assistant Professor at the University of Warwick and part-time Assistant Professor at the European University Institute.

Biography: Dr Svitlana Lebedenko specialises in innovation and industrial policy, law and technology, and intellectual property law. She is currently an Assistant Professor in the School of Law at the University of Warwick and a part-time Assistant Professor at the European University Institute, contributing to the Global Governance Programme of the Robert Schuman Centre for Advanced Studies. Previously, she was a Hauser Global Fellow at New York University School of Law's Engelberg Center on Innovation Law & Policy, a Max Weber Fellow at the European University Institute, a Research Fellow at the National Research University Higher School of Economics, and a Visiting Research Fellow at the University of Copenhagen's Center for Advanced Studies in Bioscience Innovation Law. Her first book, Russian Innovation and Intellectual Property: From Communism to Capitalism, is forthcoming with Cambridge University Press in 2026.

Abstract: Intellectual property has mainly been studied from the institutional and systems perspectives. While both have produced useful insights, neither really explains the spread of intellectual property, which, despite its numerous institutional failures, has never been rolled back. The talk introduces a technology perspective on intellectual property to provide a macro-level explanation of this phenomenon of resilience. Two propositions arise from conceptualising intellectual property as a technology. First, the efficiency and neutrality theses of technology serve as intellectual property anchors. Second, the evolutionary nature of technology means that changes to the tools of knowledge governance that may occur are likely to be bound by the limits of the dominant technological (intellectual property) paradigm. The talk will conclude by considering the descriptive and normative value of this technology perspective.

For more information see:

https://www.cipil.law.cam.ac.uk/seminars-and-events/cipil-seminars

Speaker: Dr Poorna Mysoor, CIPIL, University of Cambridge

Biography: Dr Poorna Mysoor is a Fellow in Law at Lucy Cavendish College, University of Cambridge. She was a Leverhulme Trust Early Career Fellow at Oxford Law Faculty. She is the author of two books, Copyright as Personal Property (2025) and Implied Licences in Copyright Law (2021), both published with Oxford University Press, and of other peer reviewed journals articles. Poorna obtained her undergraduate law degree at NLSIU, Bangalore, LLM from SOAS, University of London and DPhil from Oxford Law Faculty. Before embarking on her doctorate, Poorna practised intellectual property law for several years in Hong Kong and was a litigator in India.

Abstract: Many scholars argue that recognising copyright as a property right leads to expansion. The argument is that property rights empower the owners disproportionately with little regard to the interests of other stakeholders. In this presentation the speaker seeks not only to debunk this argument to show instead the limiting role played by property rights and its impact on copyright. Drawing from her recently published monograph, ‘Copyright as Personal Property’ the speaker will put forward relevant analogies from land law and personal property law in support of her arguments. She seeks to demonstrate tat copyright expansion can indeed be reined in by adopting, and not disregarding, the property framework in the characterisation of copyright.

For more information see:

https://www.cipil.law.cam.ac.uk/seminars-and-events/cipil-seminars

Speaker: Professor Jon Penney (Osgoode Hall Law School, York University, Toronto)

In this talk, Jon Penney explores key themes from his new book Chilling Effects: Repression, Conformity, and Power in the Digital Age (Cambridge University Press, 2025), which examines the increasing weaponization of surveillance, censorship, and new technology to repress and control us. With corporations, governments, and extremists employing big data, artificial intelligence, FRT, cyber-mobs, and other technological threats to limit our rights and freedoms, concerns about chilling effects—or how these activities deter us from exercising our rights—have become urgent. Penney draws on law, privacy theory, and social science to present a new conformity theory that highlights the dangers of chilling effects and their potential to erode democracy and enable a more illiberal future. Following the book’s urgent and timely message, he sheds light on the repressive and conforming effects of technology, state, and corporate power and offers a roadmap of how to respond to their weaponization today and tomorrow.

Biography: Jon Penney is a legal scholar and social scientist at Osgoode Hall Law School, York University, Toronto, where he is an Associate Professor and holds the York Research Chair in Artificial Intelligence, Data Governance, and the Law. He is also a Faculty Associate at Harvard’s Berkman Klein Center for Internet & Society and Senior Research Fellow at the University of Toronto’s Citizen Lab. His award-winning research on privacy, technology, and human rights has received national and international attention, including coverage in the Washington Post, the New York Times, Reuters International, The Guardian, and Le Monde, among others, and has been profiled in WIRED and Harvard Magazine.

For more information see:

https://www.cipil.law.cam.ac.uk/seminars-and-events/cipil-seminars

https://www.cpl.law.cam.ac.uk/