Please note that the disputation will be streamed and some of the seats behind the candidate and the opponents will be visible for those who are watching.
Participate at the disputation here
Trial lecture - time and place
Adjudication committee
- Professor Inger Berg Ørstavik, University of Oslo (leader)
- Professor Bengt Domeij, Uppsala university (1. opponent)
- Professor Göran Millqvist, Stockholms university (2. opponent)
Chair of defence
Professor John Asland
Supervisors
- Professor Ole-Andreas Rognstad
- Professor emeritus Kåre Lilleholt
Summary
As the title indicates, the topic for this thesis is the third-party conflicts in intellectual property rights. With the term Intellectual property rights we usually think of design rights, patent rights, trademark rights and copyrights. The third-party conflicts arise if there are two or more rightsholders with rights that cannot exist side by side in the same intellectual property right. For example, when a bankrupt estate seizes a patent right that someone argues that they have purchased before the bankruptcy was opened.
Intellectual Property
The main topic of the thesis can also be formulated as a question of what is needed to ensure legal protection against third parties for whole or partial rights in intellectual property. This will be useful knowledge for anyone providing legal assistance to those considering granting credit with security in one or more intellectual property rights, or for those who advise companies considering purchasing an intellectual property right or entering into a license agreement.
Third party conflicts and legal protection
Furthermore, the legal question will be of crucial importance for bankruptcy estates who would need to know which intellectual property rights that could be seized, and which partial rights that must be respected by the estate.
In the field of property law, the theory has an important position as a provider of legal certainty. As in a symbiosis, the Supreme Court and academia have developed legal doctrines and main rules, and alternative exceptions have been set up and analyzed.
Both in theory and in case law, the main vector of discussion has been related to the more traditional property goods, such as real estate property, movable property, shares and monetary claims. It is only in recent times that third-party conflicts in intellectual property rights have received increased attention, both in theory and by the legislature. This may be because the awareness of the importance and the value of intellectual property rights has increased. This awareness has also resulted in new legislation which addresses rights in rem in intellectual property rights. However, we have not previously had any general analysis of a wide range of different third-party conflicts such as what this thesis provides, nor in Norway or in other Nordic countries.
Legal certainty
The main purpose of the thesis has always been to contribute to legal certainty, and to contribute to secure transactions of intellectual property rights. Legal certainty refers to cases where an analysis based on legal dogmatic method, provides sufficient evidence to apply a solution. When legal certainty is out of reach, the aim has been to propose how the conflicts should be resolved after weighing the considerations traditionally emphasized in property law. The thesis also reveals that the conflict rules found in the Intellectual Property legislations in some areas are weakly founded, and that minor adjustments can lead to much better legal certainty, and consistency in the regulations.
By contributing to legal predictability, it has been my goal to strengthen the position of intellectual property rights in Norwegian property law.