Dr Alina Trapova joins IBIL

Earlier this month, Dr Alina Trapova joined UCL Faculty of Laws as a Lecturer in Intellectual Property Law from the University of Nottingham. She also joins IBIL as one of the Institute’s Co-Directors.

Alina is a welcome and well-qualified addition to the IBIL team. She holds a PhD in Legal Studies from Bocconi University, an LLM in Intellectual Property Law from QMUL and an LLB from The University of Sheffield. Alina's PhD thesis, entitled 'EU Copyright Law and Machine Learning: A Net of Authorship Claims', was awarded cum laude at her defence in 2021. While undertaking her PhD research, she spent time at the Max Planck Institute for Innovation and Competition in Munich.

Alina's research interests focus on copyright law and the implications of machine learning and artificial intelligence on the creative industries. In addition to IP, Alina also has a keen interest in EU law, particularly in examining the EU's law-making powers in the field of IP law. She is also a keen blogger and has recently been appointed as a Co-Managing Editor of the well-known Kluwer Copyright Blog. Alina is currently working on two specific pieces of research with consequences for copyright and artificial intelligence. The first looks at copyright authorship and ownership issues in the use of artificial intelligence in video games. The second turns to the field of journalism, where she seeks to unpack the use natural language generation techniques from a copyright law perspective.

Alina will be teaching this term on the Intellectual Property Law module of the LLB and on the Copyright Law module of the LLM. Over the coming terms, she aims to extend the teaching of copyright law by introducing a comparative law dimension and focusing on particular creative industries, including fashion, video games and journalism, thereby linking with her research interests.

Before becoming an academic, Alina spent time in private practice and has also worked at the EUIPO as a Legal Assistant to the President of the Boards of Appeal as part of the Pan-European Seal Programme. She acted as an external expert and a rapporteur for the EUIPO on a project to harmonise procedural aspects at EU appeal bodies within the EU decentralised agencies, and at the European Audiovisual Observatory on a project evaluating online piracy of sports events. She has collaborated with Milano Fashion Institute and Accademia del Lusso, and was a member of a QMUL group advising the Ukrainian government on the establishment of a specialised Ukrainian IP Court.

Commenting at the end of her first week at UCL, Alina said:

'It is great to join UCL Laws and IBIL. The first IBIL event I attended was as an LLM student in London, and I have been following them ever since – in person or remotely, while I was elsewhere in the UK or abroad. It does, however, feel slightly surreal to now be a part of the Institute, only 10 years after I opened an IP textbook for the first time! I am genuinely looking forward to contributing to the vibrant intellectual property law community at UCL Laws, as well as learning from my colleagues, and working with them in IP events and initiatives.'