About
Siva Thambisetty is an Associate Professor of Law at the London School of Economics, where she teaches and researches on the legal protection of inventions, innovation in emerging technologies, cultural property and the use and circulation of genetic resources. Among others, she has previously held grants from the EPSRC for a project on synthetic biology at Imperial College and an EU Horizon 2020 grant for a study on marine genetic resources under the Nagoya Protocol. Dr Thambisetty attended intergovernmental negotiations on the BBNJ Treaty, first as an advisor to the Pacific Small Island Developing States (IGC2, IGC3) and second, as an expert on the G77 Chair’s Team in 2022 (IGC5) and 2023 (Resumed IGC5).
From 2019 to 2023 her work and publications on the Treaty negotiations was funded by LSE Knowledge Exchange and Impact. She currently leads a project on a KEI funded Oceans Biodiversity Collective, engaging in policy conversations on the Biodiversity Beyond National Jurisdiction Treaty.
For more about her work on the Treaty, read further details or see this video.
View a recent public event ‘The Oceans Treaty as a Win for Multilateralism: What Comes Next’
Research
Grants
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.
3. KEI Project on the Ocean Biodiversity Collective.
Research Interests
I work on legal protection of technology; and the use, circulation and ownership of genetic resources. I am currently working on Treaty interpretation of the Biodiversity Beyond National Jurisdiction Treaty.
Research
- 'The Pandemic Access and Benefit Sharing System: Four Elements of a Trusted System' LSE Legal Studies Working Paper 10/2024 (with Paul Oldham)
- 'The Unfree Commons: Freedom of Marine Scientific Research and the Status of Genetic Resources Beyond National Jurisdiction' Modern Law Review (2024) 88 300-332. See also LSE Legal Studies Working Paper No. 24/2023 87
- 'The Expert Briefing Document: A developing country perspective on the making of the BBNJ Treaty' LSE Legal Studies Working Paper Series 30/2023 (with P Oldham and Claudio Chiarolla)
- ‘Digital Sequence Information in the UN High Seas Treaty: Insights from the Global Biodiversity Framework-related Decisions’ LSE Law - Policy Briefing Paper No. 53 (with P Oldham and Claudio Chiarolla)
- ‘Biodiversity Beyond National Jurisdiction: Intellectual Property Heuristics’, in Biodiversity Beyond National Jurisdiction: Intractable Challenges and Potential Solutions, M.H. Nordquist and R. Long (Eds) (Brill Nijhoff, 2020) 131–146
- 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.
Teaching
Engagement and impact
Engagement and Impact
- Advisor to the G77 plus China group – BBNJ Treaty Negotiations (2022-23)
- Advisor to the Pacific Small Island Developing States – BBNJ Treaty Negotiations (2019-2020)