Public Lectures from the Faculty of Law, University of Cambridge

Speaker: Lisa P. Ramsey, Professor of Law, University of San Diego School of LawProfessor Lisa P. Ramsey, Professor of Law at the University of San Diego School of Law and an expert on trademark law, will be speaking on her new book, Trademarks and Free Speech: Conflicts and Resolutions (CUP: 2026). This book explores how trademark laws can conflict with the right to freedom of expression and proposes a framework for evaluating free speech challenges to trademark registration and enforcement laws. It also explains why granting trademark rights in informational terms, political messages, widely used phrases, decorative product features, and other language and designs with substantial pre-existing communicative value can harm free expression and fair competition. Lisa Ramsey encourages governments to not register or protect broad trademark rights in these types of inherently valuable expression. She also recommends that trademark statutes explicitly allow certain informational, expressive, and decorative fair uses of another’s trademark, and proposes other speech-protective and pro-competitive reforms of trademark law for consideration by legislatures, courts, and trademark offices in the United States, Europe, and other countries.You can order a copy of the book from CUP’s website here, using the code RAMSEY25 at checkout for a 20% discount.Biography: Lisa P. Ramsey is a Professor of Law at the University of San Diego School of Law, where she teaches and writes in the intellectual property law area. She is an expert on trademark law and has given presentations on this topic to attorneys, professors, and students throughout the United States and around the world. Professor Ramsey’s scholarship focuses on potential conflicts between trademark laws and free speech rights, and explains how trademark protection of certain inherently valuable words, symbols, and product features can harm fair competition and freedom of expression. In 2024, she testified at a hearing held by the U.S. Senate Judiciary Committee's Intellectual Property Subcommittee about the First Amendment implications of a proposed anti-impersonation law targeted at unauthorized digital replicas called the No FAKES Act. She has also talked about free speech limits on trademark rights on panels at San Diego Comic-Con in 2023 and 2024. Professor Ramsey is an active member of the American Intellectual Property Law Association and worked on the subcommittee that updated the International Trademark Association’s Model Trademark Law Guidelines in 2019. Before joining the USD law faculty in 2004, she was an intellectual property litigator at Gray Cary Ware & Freidenrich and a judicial law clerk for the Honorable Rebecca Beach Smith in the United States District Court for the Eastern District of Virginia. In July 2025, she was named a Women of Influence in Law 2025 Honoree by the San Diego Business Journal. Information about her publications is available on her website at www.lisapramsey.com.For more information see:https://www.cipil.law.cam.ac.uk/seminars-and-events/cipil-seminars

The Cambridge Pro Bono Project (CPP) hosted the annual lecture featuring Saul Lehrfreund MBE on Thursday 7th May 2026. Saul is Co-Founder and Co-Executive Director of The Death Penalty Project, an international legal action charity based at Simons Muirhead & Burton LLP in London.The Cambridge Pro Bono Project is a research centre that draws on the subject-matter expertise of graduate researchers and Faculty experts to produce reports on a wide range of public interest matters. Every year, we invite distinguished speakers to address our researchers, staff, and students at the University of Cambridge. For more information about the Cambridge Pro Bono Project, see https://www.cpp.law.cam.ac.uk/ Twitter (https://twitter.com/Cam_ProBono) or Facebook (https://www.facebook.com/CamProBono).

The Sixth Annual Wolfson Sir David Williams Law Society Event was held on 7 March 2026.This Wolfson College Cambridge event featured two insightful panel discussions with distinguished law professionals; an afternoon tea and a formal dinner to conclude the day.The event was primarily aimed at Wolfson Law and Criminology alumni, current students, and individuals working in the legal field.Panel One: Environmental Regulation in the Era of Climate Change Chair: Tugba Basaran (Wolfson College)Speakers: Prof Surabhi Ranganathan (Lauterpacht Centre for International Law), Prof Avidan Kent (University of East Anglia), Róisín Finnegan (Barrister, Six Pump Court)Panel Two: Is the Architecture of International Justice under threat? Chair: Thomas Grant (Wolfson College)Speakers: Prof Nicola Padfield (Emeritus Professor of Criminal and Penal Justice; Former Director, Cambridge Centre for Criminal Justice), Isuru Devendra (Barrister, 36 Stone), Marie-Anne Coninsx (first EU Ambassador to the Arctic 2017-2019)For more information see: https://www.wolfson.cam.ac.uk/about/events/sixth-annual-wolfson-sir-david-williams-law-society-event

In this lecture, delivered at the 51st iteration of the Exploring Law Conference (ELC) at Cambridge, Lord Lloyd-Jones provides an expert overview of the United Kingdom's highest appellate bodies: the Supreme Court of the United Kingdom and the Judicial Committee of the Privy Council.Key themes from the address include:Constitutional Evolution: The 2005 transition from the "Law Lords" in the House of Lords to an independent Supreme Court, emphasising the separation of powers and increased transparency.The Supreme Court's Mandate: The court acts as a final arbiter for "points of law of general public importance," deciding cases that shape the development of the law across the UK.The Value of Dissent: A rigorous defence of the right to issue dissenting judgments, which Lord Lloyd-Jones argues enhances intellectual rigour and signals that the law is a living debate.The Global Reach of the Privy Council: An exploration of its role as the final court of appeal for 29 overseas jurisdictions, highlighting its unique ability to apply local laws - from common law to the Napoleonic Code.Constitutional Boundaries: A comparison between the UK’s principle of parliamentary sovereignty - where courts cannot strike down primary legislation - and other jurisdictions where the Privy Council may invalidate unconstitutional laws.Lord Lloyd-Jones concludes by encouraging the next generation of "high fliers" to pursue careers in the law, promising a rewarding and intellectually stimulating path.For more information about the Conference, see:https://www.law.cam.ac.uk/access-outreach/exploring-law-conference

On 28 March 2026 CELS held a seminar event on 'The Rule of Law as a (dis)unifying Value in the European Legal Order?'.Among the rule of law's many virtues is its capacity to provide a framework for deliberating competing ideas of justice, fairness and equality. Yet a value once widely shared is now increasingly contested in both status and meaning. The Centre held this event to explore these and related questions.The seminar was structured around four core sub-themes. Each of these will begin with a 20-minute presentation followed by a facilitated discussion:I:The Nature of Values in Supranational Legal Orders - Nabil H. Khabirpour (Video (YouTube) / Audio)II: The Judiciary and the Rule of Law in Europe - Lord Justice Baker (Video (YouTube) / Audio)III: The Rule of Law, the Market, and European Identity - Professor Catherine Barnard (Video (YouTube) / Audio)IV: Enforcing the Rule of Law as a Value under EU Law - Professor Albertina Albors-Llorens (Video (YouTube) / Audio)For more information see:https://www.cels.law.cam.ac.uk/activities-archive

On 28 March 2026 CELS held a seminar event on 'The Rule of Law as a (dis)unifying Value in the European Legal Order?'.Among the rule of law's many virtues is its capacity to provide a framework for deliberating competing ideas of justice, fairness and equality. Yet a value once widely shared is now increasingly contested in both status and meaning. The Centre held this event to explore these and related questions.The seminar was structured around four core sub-themes. Each of these will begin with a 20-minute presentation followed by a facilitated discussion:I:The Nature of Values in Supranational Legal Orders - Nabil H. Khabirpour (Video (YouTube) / Audio)II: The Judiciary and the Rule of Law in Europe - Lord Justice Baker (Video (YouTube) / Audio)III: The Rule of Law, the Market, and European Identity - Professor Catherine Barnard (Video (YouTube) / Audio)IV: Enforcing the Rule of Law as a Value under EU Law - Professor Albertina Albors-Llorens (Video (YouTube) / Audio)For more information see:https://www.cels.law.cam.ac.uk/activities-archive

Speaker: Trevor Cook (Bird and Bird)Full title: 'Does the UK Need a Distinct Doctrine of Abuse of Right? – Lessons from the Civil Law'Session 3: Comparative Experience and Potential ReformOn Saturday 21 March 2026, the Centre for Intellectual Property and Information Law (CIPIL) held its Annual Spring Conference entitled 'Abuse of Intellectual Property Rights'In Crypto Open Patent Alliance v Wright [2024] EWHC 1809 (Ch), [63], Mellor J. observed “IP rights, being monopolies of various sorts, are … justified in that their net benefit is in the public interest, with a view to fostering creativity and innovation. By corollary, where IP rights are abused to stifle creativity and innovation, the legal system ought to have the means to respond effectively.” The statement raises three questions which are the subject of this conference: (i) when are IP rights to be regarded as “abused”? (ii) What mechanisms exist to respond to such abuses? And (iii) Does the legal system have sufficient mechanisms by which to “respond effectively”?Programme:Abuses (This session not recorded)- Abuses of Trade Marks – Stuart Baran (3 New Square) - Abuses of Designs – David Stone (White & Case) - Abuse in FRAND Patent Litigation – Daniel Alexander KC (8 New Square) Current Disinventives and Remedies- Remedies for Abuses: Actions for Threats – Trevor Cook (Bird and Bird)- Preventing Misuse of interim injunctions: The Cross-Undertaking - Dr Katarina Foss-Solbrekk (University of Copenhagen) - Remedies for Abuses: The Role and Limits of Competition Law to Prevent Enforcement of Invalid IPRs– Dr Quentin Schaefer (11 South Square)- Preventing Abuses: Ethical Obligations of Patent and Trade Mark Attorneys – Phil Barnes (BarnesIP)Comparative Experience and Potential Reform- Does the UK Need a Distinct Doctrine of Abuse of Right? – Lessons from the Civil Law – Dr Amandine Leonard (University of Edinburgh) - Abuse of IP Rights. Lessons from the United States? Professor Leah Grinwald (Dean and Richard J. Morgan Professor of Law, University of Nevada)For more information see:https://www.cipil.law.cam.ac.uk/seminars-and-events/cipil-spring-conference

Speaker: Trevor Cook (Bird and Bird)Session 2: Current Disincentives and RemediesOn Saturday 21 March 2026, the Centre for Intellectual Property and Information Law (CIPIL) held its Annual Spring Conference entitled 'Abuse of Intellectual Property Rights'In Crypto Open Patent Alliance v Wright [2024] EWHC 1809 (Ch), [63], Mellor J. observed “IP rights, being monopolies of various sorts, are … justified in that their net benefit is in the public interest, with a view to fostering creativity and innovation. By corollary, where IP rights are abused to stifle creativity and innovation, the legal system ought to have the means to respond effectively.” The statement raises three questions which are the subject of this conference: (i) when are IP rights to be regarded as “abused”? (ii) What mechanisms exist to respond to such abuses? And (iii) Does the legal system have sufficient mechanisms by which to “respond effectively”?Programme:Abuses (This session not recorded)- Abuses of Trade Marks – Stuart Baran (3 New Square) - Abuses of Designs – David Stone (White & Case) - Abuse in FRAND Patent Litigation – Daniel Alexander KC (8 New Square) Current Disinventives and Remedies- Remedies for Abuses: Actions for Threats – Trevor Cook (Bird and Bird)- Preventing Misuse of interim injunctions: The Cross-Undertaking - Dr Katarina Foss-Solbrekk (University of Copenhagen) - Remedies for Abuses: The Role and Limits of Competition Law to Prevent Enforcement of Invalid IPRs– Dr Quentin Schaefer (11 South Square)- Preventing Abuses: Ethical Obligations of Patent and Trade Mark Attorneys – Phil Barnes (BarnesIP)Comparative Experience and Potential Reform- Does the UK Need a Distinct Doctrine of Abuse of Right? – Lessons from the Civil Law – Dr Amandine Leonard (University of Edinburgh) - Abuse of IP Rights. Lessons from the United States? Professor Leah Grinwald (Dean and Richard J. Morgan Professor of Law, University of Nevada)For more information see:https://www.cipil.law.cam.ac.uk/seminars-and-events/cipil-spring-conference

Speaker: Dr Quentin Schaefer (11 South Square)Session 2: Current Disincentives and RemediesOn Saturday 21 March 2026, the Centre for Intellectual Property and Information Law (CIPIL) held its Annual Spring Conference entitled 'Abuse of Intellectual Property Rights'In Crypto Open Patent Alliance v Wright [2024] EWHC 1809 (Ch), [63], Mellor J. observed “IP rights, being monopolies of various sorts, are … justified in that their net benefit is in the public interest, with a view to fostering creativity and innovation. By corollary, where IP rights are abused to stifle creativity and innovation, the legal system ought to have the means to respond effectively.” The statement raises three questions which are the subject of this conference: (i) when are IP rights to be regarded as “abused”? (ii) What mechanisms exist to respond to such abuses? And (iii) Does the legal system have sufficient mechanisms by which to “respond effectively”?Programme:Abuses (This session not recorded)- Abuses of Trade Marks – Stuart Baran (3 New Square) - Abuses of Designs – David Stone (White & Case) - Abuse in FRAND Patent Litigation – Daniel Alexander KC (8 New Square) Current Disinventives and Remedies- Remedies for Abuses: Actions for Threats – Trevor Cook (Bird and Bird)- Preventing Misuse of interim injunctions: The Cross-Undertaking - Dr Katarina Foss-Solbrekk (University of Copenhagen) - Remedies for Abuses: The Role and Limits of Competition Law to Prevent Enforcement of Invalid IPRs– Dr Quentin Schaefer (11 South Square)- Preventing Abuses: Ethical Obligations of Patent and Trade Mark Attorneys – Phil Barnes (BarnesIP)Comparative Experience and Potential Reform- Does the UK Need a Distinct Doctrine of Abuse of Right? – Lessons from the Civil Law – Dr Amandine Leonard (University of Edinburgh) - Abuse of IP Rights. Lessons from the United States? Professor Leah Grinwald (Dean and Richard J. Morgan Professor of Law, University of Nevada)For more information see:https://www.cipil.law.cam.ac.uk/seminars-and-events/cipil-spring-conference

Speaker: Professor William J. Magnuson (Professor of Law, Texas A&M University School of Law)Abstract: A remarkable transformation is taking place in our financial markets. The rise of machine learning algorithms and other artificial intelligence models has rapidly overtaken older methods of financial decisionmaking, and the consequences of the revolution are beginning to be felt across the capital markets ecosystem, from stock exchanges to derivatives markets to currency trading. These new technologies offer great promise, including more accurate prices, faster transactions and more efficient trading. But they also create risks. From flash crashes to insider trading algorithms to adversarial attacks, artificial intelligence presents a range of unique vulnerabilities that could lead to significant and wide-ranging harm to our financial system. Legal frameworks devised to structure and constrain financial institutions, in turn, are ill-equipped to deal with these harms because they were designed based on outdated assumptions about the structure of markets, as well as the nature of its primary actors. This Article offers the first comprehensive account of the economic, political and legal consequences of the rise of artificially intelligent markets. It demonstrates how the major driver of this shift has been the hedge fund industry, an opaque and lightly regulated sector of the financial ecosystem that has long been an early-adopter of financial technology. It concludes by proposing a series of escalating regulatory reforms that might better fit financial regulation to our new artificially intelligent markets.William Magnuson is a professor at Texas A&M Law School, where he teaches corporate law. Prior to joining Texas A&M, he taught law at Harvard, worked as an associate in the mergers and acquisitions group of Sullivan & Cromwell, and served as a journalist in the Rome bureau of the Washington Post. He is the author of For Profit: A History of Corporations (Basic Books, 2022) and Blockchain Democracy: Technology, Law and the Rule of the Crowd (Cambridge University Press, 2020). His work has appeared in the Wall Street Journal, the Washington Post, the Financial Times, the L.A. Times, and Bloomberg. He holds a B.A. from Princeton University, a J.D. from Harvard Law School, and an M.A. from the University of Padua.3CL runs the 3CL Travers Smith Lunchtime Seminar Series, featuring leading academics from the Faculty, and high-profile practitioners.For more information see the Centre for Corporate and Commercial Law website:http://www.3cl.law.cam.ac.uk/

Speaker: Associate Professor David A. Simon, Northeastern University School of LawBiography: David A. Simon, J.D., LL.M., Ph.D., is an Associate Professor of Law at Northeastern University School of Law, where he teaches courses on tort law, administrative law, and drug & device regulation. Professor Simon’s research focuses on innovation in healthcare, with an emphasis on drugs and devices. His work has appeared or will appear in a variety of publications, including the Texas Law Review, the Boston College Law Review, the Emory Law Journal, the Georgia Law Review, the Oxford Journal of Legal Studies, the Yale Journal of Law & the Humanities, the Journal of Law & the Biosciences, JAMA, Nature Biotechnology and the Journal of Law, Medicine, & Ethics. A complete list of Dr. Simon’s publications is available on his CV . Professor Simon is the Principal Investigator on the Project on Medical Device Safety and co-director of the Amy J. Reed Collaborative for Medical Device Safety, funded by Arnold Ventures. He is also a member of the UIUC CLASSICA research team, a project funded by the European Union. He has previously served on the faculties of Harvard Law School, George Washington University Law School, and the University of Kansas School of Law. During histime at Harvard Law School, he led a three-year project at the Petrie-Flom Center for Health Law Policy, Biotechnology, and Bioethics dubbed Diagnosing in the Home: The Ethical, Legal, and Regulatory Challenges and Opportunities of Digital Home Health, and funded by the Gordon and Betty Moore Foundation. Professor Simon is also a founder of two nonprofits—Harmed Americans for Reform in Medical-Device Safety and Project TCF20—and a practicing member of the Illinois and Massachusetts Bars.Abstract: Copyright law grants authors special non-economic “moral rights” to prevent others from using their works in certain ways. In their strongest “solipsistic” form, moral rights give the author the absolute power to prevent any use that offends her sensibilities. While the solipsistic view of moral rights exists in only a few countries, the sentiment underlying it is pervasive in moral rights theory: an author’s claims are superior to all others because only the author knows when harm occurs, regardless of others’ views. In other words, certain uses of works result in the author experiencing harm that no one else can experience and that does not depend on what others think. This Article asks and evaluates the following question: can harm based only on the author’s subjective experience justify solipsistic moral rights? It argues that the answer is probably not—and that, if supported, solipsistic moral rights will be tightly limited. Drawing on literature in science fiction and philosophy, this Article. contends that the best justification for the monastic view is also the most implausible: authors have moral rights only when another’s use causes the author to experience an inconsistency between her perceived use of the work and her memories of creating the work. In short, an author’s rights are contingent on her ability to remember creating her work. This is the best justification because the author’s memories of creating the work satisfy all the requirements for authorial harm: it identifies discrete psychological states that are tied directly and only to the author’s acts of creation, independent of others’ perceptions. It is the least plausible, however, because it conditions important rights on one’s ability to remember past actions. Despite its seeming implausibility, the author’s memories of creation provide the best support for grounding monastic moral rights. As a consequence, the case for monastic moral rights, if it can be made, is tightly limited to cases where another’s use of an author’s work causes a negative psychological response directly tied to the author’s memories of creating the work.For more information see:https://www.cipil.law.cam.ac.uk/seminars-and-events/cipil-seminars

Speaker: Professor Niamh Dunne, LSEBiography: Niamh Dunne is a professor at the Law School of the London School of Economics, where she teaches and researches in competition law.Abstract: Is it possible to reconcile the competing visions of what constitutes ‘effective’ abuse of dominance enforcement that emerge from the contemporary jurisprudence of the Commission and the Court of Justice? Article 102 has been a focal point for efforts both to modernise but also to render more effective the application of EU competition law, with different strands of recent case law emphasising the pursuit of market efficiency, the protection of equality of market access, and the prevention of exploitation by dominant undertakings. This presentation will explore the coherence of these developments, and consider whether this question matters in light of the Commission’s stated objective of achieving ‘a robust enforcement’ of Article 102. For more information see:https://www.cels.law.cam.ac.uk/weekly-seminar-series