Felix Addor read law at the University of Berne and completed his studies as a research assistant in private international law with a Ph.D. He joined the Swiss Intellectual Property Institute ((Swiss Ministry of Justice) in 1994, and in 2007 was appointed Deputy Director General, General Counsel and Director of the Legal and International Affairs Division.
Category Archives: Biographies of Authors – International Intellectual Property Law
Susette Biber-Klemm
Susette Biber-Klemm read law and obtained her doctorate at the University of Basel. She was a Senior Lecturer at the University of Basel from 1995 to 2014, and Senior Research Fellow at the World Trade Institute. She specializes in interdisciplinary international and national environmental law and interdisciplinary law of sustainable development.
Mira Burri
Mira Burri received her law degree from the University of Sofia and a Master of Advanced European Studies (MAES) from the Europe Institute of the University of Basel. Her doctoral dissertation on EU competition law was awarded the Professor Walther Hug Prize (2006/2007). She completed her postdoctoral habilitation in 2015 with venia docendi for the fields of international economic law, European and international communications and media law and internet law. Mira was a Senior Fellow at the World Trade Institute at the University of Berne where she led a project on digital technologies and trade governance as part of the Swiss National Centre of Competence in Research (NCCR): Trade Regulation. She is Senior Lecturer and Managing Director Ior internationalization at the Faculty of Law of the University of Lucerne, since April 2016. In this role she is responsible for advancing the Faculty’s internationalization strategy and expanding and improving our international academic programme, network of partner institutions and mobility opportunities for Lucerne-based and incoming students. She teaches International Law of Contemporary Media, Digital Copyright, Internet Law and International Intellectual Property Law.
Julian Cockbain
Julian Cockbain, Ph.D., is a Consultant European Patent Attorney based in Ghent, Belgium and Oxford, UK. After taking a degree and doctorate in chemistry at Oxford University he joined the patent and trademark law firm Dehns in London in 1979, qualifying as a UK patent attorney in 1983 and as a European Patent Attorney in 1984. He was made partner at Dehns in 1985, a position he held until becoming a consultant in 2012. He has written and prosecuted several hundred patent applications, and has published widely on patent-related matters.
Thomas Cottier, Editor and Author
Thomas Cottier, former Managing Director of the World Trade Institute and the Institute of European and International Economic Law, is a Professor emeritus of European and International Economic Law at the University of Bern. He was educated at the University of Bern and was a research fellow with Professor Jörg Paul Müller in constitutional and public international law.
Philippe Cullet
Philippe Cullet is Professor of International and Environmental Law at the University of London. He came to teach at the School of Oriental and African Studies (SOAS) with qualifications in law and development studies from Geneva University, London (King’s College and SOAS) and Stanford University.
Jacques de Werra
Jacques de Werra is Professor of Contract Law and Intellectual Property Law at the Law School of the University of Geneva, Switzerland. He authored a doctoral thesis in Switzerland on comparative copyright law which he completed as a visiting scholar at the Max-Planck Institute for Intellectual Property, Competition and Tax Law in Munich in 1996.
Geoffrey Gaultier
Geoffrey Gaultier (1927-2020) was a French intellectual property lawyer who was highly active in the AIPPI. He was the Association’s keeper of the minutes from 1966 until 1980 when he was appointed General Reporter of the Association in 1980.
Christoph Germann
Christoph Germann is an attorney of law based in Geneva. In 2000, he founded the law firm Germann Avocats after having worked at international law firms (Homburger Rechtsanwälte, Zurich; Baker & McKenzie, San Francisco and Geneva) and a Swiss court for six years. He holds a Ph.D. from the Law School of the University of Berne. His doctoral dissertation focused on cultural diversity and international trade regulation (WTO agreements, UNESCO conventions and WIPO treaties) from the perspectives of intellectual property, state aid, competition and trade and culture laws and policies, with special attention to freedom of expression.
Alexandra Grazioli
Alexandra Grazioli is Director of the Lisbon Registry in the Brands and Designs Sector of the World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO), as of 2020. Her responsibilities include the management, development and promotion of the Lisbon System and the development and execution of projects relating to geographical indications.
Andrea Nascimento Müller
Andrea Nascimento Müller graduated from the Graduate Institute of Advanced Studies in Geneva with a Ph.D. dissertation on the protection of traditional knowledge through geographical indications, published in 2003. A resident of Versoix in the canton of Geneva, she is acting director of a real estate company in London.
Marion Panizzon
Marion Panizzon read law at the University of Fribourg, obtained an LLM at Duke Law School and earned a Ph.D. in Law from the University of Berne in 2004, followed by her postdoctoral habilitation in 2014. Before joining the WTI in 2005, Dr. Panizzon was a Visiting Scholar at Georgetown University Law Center and at the Institute for Comparative Law, University of Lausanne.
Gloria Pasadilla
Gloria Pasadilla studied at the University of the Philippines. She holds a Master’s degree from the World Trade Institute, Berne and obtained her Ph.D. in Economics from New York University. Since graduating she has been Assistant Professor at the University of Asia and the Pacific, a Senior Research Fellow at the Philippines Institute of Development Studies and a Senior Analyst at the APEC Secretariat, Singapore.
Sigrid Sterckx
Sigrid Sterckx, Ph.D., is Professor of Ethics and Political and Social Philosophy at the Department of Philosophy and Moral Sciences of Ghent University since 2011. She is a founding member of both the Bioethics Institute Ghent and the Ghent Centre for Global Studies. She lectures on theoretical and applied ethics and social and political philosophy. Her research projects focus on human tissue research and bio-banking, patenting in biomedicine and genomics, organ transplantation, neurosciences, criminal law and ethics, end-of-life decisions and global justice. She has published widely in the field.
Edith Tilton Penrose
Edith Tilton Penrose (1914-1996) received a Bachelor’s degree in 1936 from the University of California at Berkeley. In 1936 she married David Burton Denhardt, who died two years later in a hunting accident, leaving her with an infant son. She moved to Baltimore and took her MA and PhD under the supervision of Fritz Machlup at Johns Hopkins University.
Thu-Lang Tran Wasescha
Thu-Lang Tran Wasescha came to Switzerland from Vietnam. She read law at the University of Geneva, trained at a Swiss trademark office and subsequently joined the staff of the World Intellectual Property Office. From 1976 to 1986 she was Principal Legal Officer in the Industrial Property Division of the World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO).
Aloïs Troller
Aloïs Troller (1906-1987) was the eminent academic and practicing Swiss intellectual property lawyer of the 20th century. He combined legal practice and theory of intellectual property law, including legal philosophy. He was a legal practitioner in Lucerne as of 1941 and Professor of Law at the University of Fribourg.