IP Provocations

In the season one finale of IP Provocations, we’re joined by barrister Amy Surkis to reflect on the series and ponder what we’ve learned. Amy is an expert IP barrister and was our stellar research assistant this season. We chat about what has surprised us and stuck with us from across the series. In particular, we unpack the interplay between patent systems, and broader socio-economic systems, and...

In this very special episode of IP Provocations, Rebecca and Kim talk to Larissa Behrendt about First Nations innovation - and what we can learn from the people who lived sustainably in the land now known as Australia for over 65,000 years.  Drawing upon the themes of Behrendt’s new documentary series The First Inventors , Behrendt speaks about how First Nations’ technologies can tackle climate ch...

In part 2 of this extended conversation with activist Achal Prabhala and the WTO’s Tony Taubman, we pick up where we left off, asking if the approach taken to the Medicines Patent Pool could also be used to drive our response to the climate emergency.  We then tackle a host of thorny patent issues. Should we focus on the distribution of knowledge, and not just generating more of it? Just how bad i...

Our chat centres around the pharmaceutical industry. How are skewed incentives prioritising the lives of rich people over poor people? How is the patent system like high jumping?  What impact is the UN’s Medicines Patent Pool having on equalising access to medicine? And are universities falling into the trap of seeing patents as the most important validation of their research agenda? Find more inf...

In 2022, just 1.8 per cent of Australian patent applications were by all-women teams, but half were all-male teams, according to research from Dr Vicki Huang . It’s a remarkable statistic. In this episode of IP Provocations, we dig into the question of who the system recognises as inventors, and who it excludes. What is the correlation between patent protection and racial violence? Why is the ster...

Welcome to IP Provocations! In this first episode, we drill experts Janet Freilich and John Liddicoat about the extent to which the promises patent law makes match up with what happens in practice. Is the system working as it’s supposed to? Are patents incentivising the types of innovation we want most? Do we still see scientific breakthroughs without them? What would happen if every patent was ac...

IP Provocations asks challenging and sometimes controversial questions about intellectual property, data, the world we live in AND the world we want to live in. Hosted by law professors Rebecca Giblin and Kimberlee Weatherall, this first season asks uncomfortable questions about patents . They’re supposed to facilitate cutting edge science and innovation, and enable the spread of ideas and knowled...