STeP Talks 2025

International patent law and access to pandemic medicines. Mutually reinforcing or mutually exclusive?

Ever since the TRIPS Agreement has globalised intellectual property in 1995, heated debates have surrounded the role and effects of patent protection on medicines. Pharmaceuticals are an extremely socially sensitive area of patent law: on the one hand, the monopoly it confers is a necessary incentive to develop medicines which we would not have otherwise; on the other hand, the high prices it implicates result in access to life-saving medicines being denied to millions of people worldwide. The tragedy of the HIV pandemic at the turn of the century led to the adoption of the Doha Declaration on the TRIPS Agreement and public health and to new public health approaches to medical patents in domestic and international law, mostly relating to the use of public interest safeguards inbuilt in the TRIPS – the so-called flexibilities. In this STeP Talk, we will address the question as to whether such patent law mechanisms developed for protecting public health can apply successfully to ensure access to medicines when the public health challenge is a global infectious disease pandemic.

Please join us online or on-site in Groningen on January 31^st, from 11-13h

Jacopo Natali

Jacopo Natali is a Ph.D. candidate in Public and International Law, Ethics and Economics for Sustainable Development (LEES) at the University of Milan (Università degli Studi di Milano, Italy), and currently a visiting Ph.D. researcher at the University of Groningen. He received his legal education at the University of Milan, where he completed a combined bachelor’s and master’s degree in law. His research agenda comprises international IP law, WTO law, international human rights law and access to medicines, and the interfaces between these international legal regimes. His research interests and expertise extend to public international law at large, general theory and philosophy of law, and law and economics.

Marina Markellou

Marina Markellou is Assistant Professor in Law at the University of Groningen. After accomplishing a Master of Laws in Intellectual Property (LLM) on September 2005 in Montpellier of France, she was offered a scholarship by the Greek State to pursue a Ph.D. degree in the field of Copyright law (University of Montpellier/University of Athens-high distinction). Her primary research interests concern intellectual property, law and art, and protection of cultural heritage. Member of the CECOJI-CNRS of France, of the Greek ALAI group, of the International Society for Research on Art and CulturalHeritage Law (ISCHAL), and of the EUROPEANA Copyright Community Steering Group, Marina often participates as an ethics and legal expert in many European funded projects and as an External Ethics Evaluator on behalf of the European Commission for Horizon Europe proposals on "Culture, Creativity and Inclusive society".

CSNN Edition: Cybersecurity & Employee Monitoring at Work

In this workshop, Michele Molè will present the findings of his research on workplace surveillance technologies, focusing on the use of digital tools for purposes such as cybersecurity, productivity monitoring, and more. The session will begin with an exploration of the key legal challenges within the European legal framework, with particular attention to the GDPR and the AI Regulation. Following this, participants will engage in an interactive segment where they will have the opportunity to experiment with real employee monitoring software, gaining insight into its functionality and the potential risks it poses to employees' privacy and rights.

Join us for this special edition of STeP Talks on the Cybersecurity Noord-Nederland project in Groningen or online on February 5th from 15-17h by registering here!

Michele Molè

Michele Molè is a PhD candidate at the University of Groningen Law Faculty. His research focuses on the regulation of workplace surveillance and new technologies in the EU.

Artificial Intelligence and the Future of Criminal Procedure?

On February 11th, from 15-17h, we are hosting a STeP Talk on the challenges of AI in criminal procedure. Please register to join online or on-site in Groningen.

Prof. Sabine Gless

Prof. Sabine Gless has been a full professor of criminal law and criminal procedural law at the University of Basel since 2005. Her current research focuses on the one hand on criminal law and procedural law and the impact of the digitalization of our world on traditional legal institutions. On the other hand, she examines the significance of general principles and human rights for legitimate cross-border criminal prosecution in international criminal law and mutual legal assistance law.

Sofie Royer

Sofie Royer is a research expert at CiTiP (KU Leuven), affiliated to the Institute of Criminal Law (KU Leuven) and a guest professor at ULiège. She has been a visiting researcher at the Max Planck Institute for Foreign and International Criminal Law in Freiburg (Germany). Sofie's main research focus lies with the impact of new technologies on criminal law, criminal procedure, and human rights. Her research interests include topics as cybercrime, hate speech on social media and freedom of expression, deepfakes and deepnudes, and data driven criminal investigations.

Adi Stoykova

Radina (Adi) Stoykova is assistant professor in technology law at the
University of Groningen (RUG). She holds a dual PhD in law and information security from RUG and the Norwegian University of Science and Technology. She is specialising in reliability of digital evidence and digital forensics standardization. She has practical
expertise with digital evidence from computers, social media, clouds, and AI-generated evidence.