Robert Burrell

Professor of Intellectual Property and Information Technology Law

St Peter's College

Other affiliations

Melbourne Law School

Faculty officer role(s):

Director of the Oxford Intellectual Property Research Centre

Director of the Diploma in Intellectual Property Law & Practice

Director of the MSc in Intellectual Property

Biography

Robert holds the Professorship of Intellectual Property and Information Technology Law. He also holds a visiting professorial position at Melbourne Law School. Robert’s previous academic positions include posts at the Australian National University and King’s College London. He has held visiting positions at the University of Cambridge, the Benjamin N. Cardozo School of Law in New York and the National University of Singapore.

Robert teaches and researches across all areas of intellectual property law. He is the author, with Allison Coleman, of Copyright Exceptions: The Digital Impact (Cambridge University Press, 2005) and, with Michael Handler, of Australian Trade Mark Law (Oxford University Press, 2010; 2nd ed. 2016). His most recent work includes an investigation of the role of rewards as an alternative to the patent system in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, and an interdisciplinary project with a team of psychologists that tests trade mark law’s assumptions about consumers.

His work has been cited by the High Court of Australia, the Federal Court of Australia, the Supreme Court of New Zealand, the Court of Appeal of England and Wales and in an Opinion of an Advocate General to the European Court of Justice.

Outside of academia, Robert has spent many years working as a consultant to boutique Australian firms and, in particular, has substantial experience in litigation before the Australian Trade Marks Office.

Publications

Journal Article (19)

BURRELL R and Handler M, ‘Zombie Marks Redux: Is Australia Safe from the New Zealand Variant?’ [2022] Australian Intellectual Property Journal

BURRELL R and Kelly C, ‘INNOVATION POLICY AND CHRONIC EMERGENCIES’ [2022] Vanderbilt Journal of Entertainment and Technology Law

Burrell R and Handler M, ‘Zombie Marks Redux: Is Australia Safe from the New Zealand Variant?’ (2022) 32 Australian Intellectual Property Journal (forthcoming)

BURRELL R and Handler M, ‘Zombie Marks Invade New Zealand! How Scared Should the Rest of the World Be?’ [2021] Oxford University Commonwealth Law Journal

Burrell R and Kelly C, ‘The COVID-19 pandemic and the challenge for innovation policy’ (2020) 71 Northern Ireland Legal Quarterly 89

Burrell R and Kelly C, ‘Myths of the medical methods exclusion: medicine and patents in nineteenth century Britain’ (2018) 38(4) Legal Studies 607

Burrell R and Weatherall K, ‘Towards a New Relationship Between Trade Mark Law and Psychology’ (2018) 71(1) Current Legal Problems 87

Humphreys M and others, ‘Recognition in Context: Implications for trade mark law.’ (2017) 24(5) Psychonomic Bulletin and Review 1665

Burt J and others, ‘Brand Name Confusion: Subjective and objective measures of orthographic similarity’ (2017) 23(3) Journal of Experimental Psychology: Applied 320

Humphreys M and others, ‘How Important is the Name in Predicting False Recognition for Lookalike Brands?’ (2017) 23(3) Psychology, Public Policy, and Law 381

Burrell R and Handler M, ‘Reputation in European trade mark law: a re-examination’ (2016) 17(1) ERA Forum 85

Burrell R and Handler M, ‘A Requiem for Champagne Heidsieck: Trade mark use and parallel importation’ (2016) 29(3) Australian Intellectual Property Journal 110

Burrell R and Kelly C, ‘PARLIAMENTARY REWARDS AND THE EVOLUTION OF THE PATENT SYSTEM’ (2015) 74(3) The Cambridge Law Journal 423

Burrell R and Kelly C, ‘Public Rewards and Innovation Policy: Lessons from the Eighteenth and Early Nineteenth Centuries’ (2014) 77(6) Modern Law Review 858

Burrell R and Handler M, ‘Reconciling Use-Based and Registration-Based Rights within The Trade Mark System: What the problems with section 58A of the Trade Marks Act tell us’ (2014) 42(1) Federal Law Review 91

Burrell R and Gangjee D, ‘Trade marks and freedom of expression - A call for caution’ (2010) 41(5) IIC International Review of Intellectual Property and Competition Law 544

Gangjee D and Burrell R, ‘Because You’re Worth It: L’Oréal and the Prohibition on Free Riding’ (2010) 73(2) Modern Law Review 282

BURRELL R and Kelly C, ‘Vanderbilt Journal of Entertainment and Technology Law’ Vanderbilt Journal of Entertainment and Technology Law

BURRELL R and Handler M, ‘Who Reads the Trade Marks Register’ Oxford Journal of Legal Studies

Handler R, Australian Trade Mark Law, 3rd Edition (2023)

BURRELL R and Handler M, ‘The garden path and the road not taken: the Australian approach to trade mark ownership and its connection with a lost model of trade mark registration’ in L Bently and B Bone (eds.), Research Handbook on the History of Trade Mark Law (Edward Elgar 2024)

Burrell R, ‘The Changing Judicial Politics of Copyright Exceptions in the UK’ in S Balganesh, N Wee Loon and H Sun (eds.), The Cambridge Handbook of Copyright Limitations and Exceptions (CUP 2021)

Burrell R and Handler M, ‘(Re)claiming trade mark protection’ in G Dinwoodie and M Janis (eds.), Research Handbook on Trademark Law Reform (Edward Elgar 2021)

Burrell R and Handler M, ‘Keyword Advertising and Actionable Consumer Confusion’ in T Aplin (ed.), Research Handbook on Intellectual Property and Digital Technologies (Edward Elgar 2020)

Burrell R and Handler M, ‘Trademark Transactions in Common Law Countries: Liberalisation and Its Limits’ in I Calboli and J Ginsburg (eds.), Cambridge Handbook of International and Comparative Trademark Law (CUP 2020)

Burrell R, ‘Is Trade Mark Law Fit for Purpose?’ in A Johnston and L Talbot (eds.), Great Debates in Commercial and Corporate Law (Macmillan 2020)

Burrell R, ‘Rethinking the Relationship between Registered and Unregistered Trade Marks’, ACROSS INTELLECTUAL PROPERTY: ESSAYS IN HONOUR OF SAM RICKETSON (2020)

Burrell R, ‘Unpacking Constitutional Protection for Trade Marks: The Plain Packaging Disputes before National Courts’ in C Heath and A Kamperman Sanders (eds.), Intellectual Property and International Dispute Resolution (Kluwer 2019)

Burrell R and Hudson E, ‘Property concepts in European copyright law The case of abandonment’, CONCEPTS OF PROPERTY IN INTELLECTUAL POPERTY LAW (2013)

Hudson E and Burrell R, ‘Abandonment, copyright and orphaned works: What does it mean to take the proprietary nature of intellectual property rights seriously?’ (2011) 35(3) Melbourne University Law Review 971 (review)