IBIL’s Professor Ilanah Fhima was invited to opened this year’s Spring Public Lectures series at the Centre for Intellectual Property, Policy & Management, Bournemouth University on 5 February 2026.
Her talk was about ‘Average Consumer(s)’ in trade mark law, which is one of her upcoming papers. Trade mark law, with its focus on averages consumers, frequently devolves into a measure of what the majority of consumers think. This does not protect the interests of minorities – a point which this presentation will illustrate through trade mark law’s approach to languages other than English. Hence, the presentation will seek to reconceptualise the average consumer: trade mark law’s benchmark for infringement and registrability, drawing a middle ground between ascertaining consumer perception through the eyes of a single, hypothetical individual and through a purely empirical approach. Instead, Professor Fhima’s paper argues that the focus should be on average consumers as a balancing exercise of the interests of groups of consumers. This reality-based approach allows for a consideration of a more diverse cross section of the public and reflects developments in other areas of law.
IBIL would like to congratulate Ilanah on her well-received talk and we look forward to the article’s publication!