About me

Dr Siva Thambisetty joined LSE in 2004 prior to which she was lecturing at University College London. She holds degrees from the National Law School of India and the University of Oxford where she completed the two-year BCL and DPhil (Exeter College). Dr Thambisetty was LSE’s Regional Champion for India during 2011-13 and is on the school’s South Asia Centre’s Faculty Advisory Board. She was a visiting fellow at Imperial College, London 2011-12. Dr Thambisetty was external examiner for the IP Diploma on Intellectual Property Rights, University of Oxford (2013-2017).

She is currently a member of the Research Staff Committee and Research Ethics Committee. She has contributed to the law faculty’s efforts towards the Athena Swan Equality Charter Mark.

In 2011-12 Dr Thambisetty won LSE’s first ever grant from the Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council for a project on synthetic biology and intellectual property law. She is Principal Investigator on a EU Horizon 2020 grant to study the Implementation of the Nagoya Protocol (2014-2019) as part of the INMARE project on Marine Biodiversity.

She interrupted her career to take parental leave in 2009-2010 and 2014-2015.

Dr Thambisetty has blogged for SAC@LSE, SpicyIP and Open Democracy. Follow her @SivaThambisetty

Administrative support: Law.Reception@lse.ac.uk

Siva Thambisetty, Aisling McMahon, Luke McDonagh, Hyo Yoon Kang and Graham Dutfield, ‘Addressing vaccine inequity during the COVID-19 pandemic: the TRIPS intellectual property waiver proposal and beyond’ Cambridge Law Journal 81 (2022) 384-416.
'Intellectual Property and Marine Genetic Resources: Navigating Articles 10-13 in the BBNJ Draft Treaty'LSE Law Policy Briefing Paper 48/2022
'Liza’s Bucket: Intellectual Property and the Metamodern Impulse'LSE Law Working Paper Series 19/2020
'Improving access to patented medicines: Are human rights getting in the way?'LSE Law Working Paper Series 03/2018
'The construction of legitimacy in European patent law'Intellectual Property Quarterly (2017) 3 pp.221-244 ['Textualisation as Mode of Persuasion for Patent Law and What it Means for Legitimacy'LSE Law Working Paper Series, 07-2015]
'Alice and "something more": the drift towards European patent jurisprudence' (Peer Commentary on Prof Dan Burk ‘Alice and Dolly’) Journal of Law and the Biosciences (2016) 3 (3) pp.691-696
'The learning needs of the patent system and emerging technologies: a focus on synthetic biology'Intellectual Property Quarterly 2014 (1) pp.13-39.
'Novartis v Union of India and the Person Skilled in the Art: A Missed Opportunity'Q.M.J.I.P. 2014, 4 (1), 79-94
'Sufficiency of Disclosure in the Common Law: Complexity, Divergence and Confusion’ in Ng, D’Agostino and Bently Ed.The Common Law of Intellectual Property: Essays in Honour of Professor David Vaver (Hart 2010) [LSE Law, Society and Economy Working Paper Series (WPS 6/2013)]
‘Why Patent Law Doesn’t do Innovation Policy’ in (2013) 'Competition law, intellectual property rights and dynamic analysis: towards a new institutional “equilibrium?"' Concurrences, 2013 (4). 13. [LSE Legal Studies Working Paper no 20/2013]
'Patent litigation in the United Kingdom: solutions in search of a problem?'European Intellectual Property Review 2010, 32(5), 238-246
'SMEs and patent litigation: policy-based evidence making?'European Intellectual Property Review 2010, 32(4), 143-145
S Thambisetty and K Kumaramangalam 'Peer-review and Patents: Why the Goose that Lays the Golden Egg may be a Red Herring' 171 30 European Intellectual Property Review (2008) 171-173
'Legal Transplants in Patent Law: Why Utility is the New Industrial Applicability' 49 Jurimetrics J 155-201 (2009) [LSE Law and Society Working Paper, 06/March 2008)]
'Timing, Change and Continuity in the Patent System' in Sebastian Haunss and Kenneth C Shadlen Eds. The Politics of Intellectual Property: Contestation over the Ownership, Use, and Control of Knowledge and Information. (Edward Elgar, 2009) 211-237.
'Patents as Credence Goods'Oxford Journal of Legal Studies Vol 27, no 4, pp 707-740, 2007 [first appeared in LSE Law, Society and Economy Working Paper Series, WPS 04-2007 July 2007]
'Institutional Nature of the Patent system: Implications for Bioethical Decision-Making' in Christian Lenk Ed. Ethics and Law of Intellectual Property: Current Problems in Politics, Science and Technology, Chapter 13 (Ashgate 2007)
'Understanding Morality as a Ground for Exclusion from Patentability under European Law', Eubios Journal of Asian and International Bioethics 12 March 2002 pp 48-53.
'Database Access Crucial for Developing Countries' Nature Biotechnology, August 2002, p 775
'Database Access Crucial for Developing Countries' Nature Biotechnology, August 2002, p 775
'Human Genome Research in Developing Countries: Problems and Proposals' Journal of World Intellectual Property Vol: 5 No: 5 September 2002, pp 685-723.

Expert Report submitted to the Working Group on Emerging Biotechnologies, Nuffield Bioethics Council ‘Analytical Significance of Emergence in the Patent System’. February 2012
‘Patent Enforcement in the UK: A Response to Lord Justice Jackson’s Review of Civil Litigation Costs’ Expert Opinion, Strategic Advisory Board on Intellectual Property Rights, UK July 30th 2009.
United Kingdom Intellectual Property Office commissioned impact study on the proposed European Patents Court conducted by the Centre for Evaluation Services. Academic expert. (July – October 2008)
Expert submission on the setting up of the Indian National Biotechnology Regulatory Authority: ‘The National Biotechnology Regulatory Authority’s Mandate Must Include Powers under S 3(b) of the Indian Patents Act’. See Guest Post ‘Grave Diggers, Immoral Patents and the NBRA’ Spicy IP June 16th 2008.
Advisory role on the Ethical Legal and Social Issues (ELSI) at the launch of the Eastern Mediterranean Genome Consortium. Paper titled ‘Genomics and Innovation: The Potential for Socio-Economic Change in Developing Countries’ February 2004
6. Study report for the UK Government’s Commission for Intellectual Property Rights on ‘Human Genome Patents and Developing Countries’ January 2002 (www.iprcommission.org). (Report listed as one of five most important documents on Human Genome Studies by SciDev.net.)

1. EPSRC Discipline Hopping Grant ‘Synthetic Biology: Generativity and the Limits of Intellectual Property Law’ ((PI, 2011-12, £86,000).

2. EU Horizon 2020 INMARE Project ‘The Implementation of the Nagoya Protocol’ (PI, 2015-2019, 165,000 euros). Funding includes Band 7 post- doctoral research officer position and teaching buy out.

My research focuses on the legal protection of technology, particularly emerging technologies, comparative patent law and institutional perspectives on the formation and application of global patent norms.

I have contributed reports to the UK Commission on Intellectual Property Rights (2002), Justice Jackson’s Review of Civil Litigation Costs (2009), and the Nuffield Bioethics Council (2013).

Intellectual Property Law: LL251

ELLM: Innovation, Technology and Patent Law: LL435E (Convener)

The Legal Protection of Inventions: LL4BM (Convener)

Innovation, Technology and Patent Law: LL4BN (Convener)

Current Issues in Intellectual and Cultural Property Law: LL4BP

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