Biography

Dr Daniela Simone is a Lecturer in Law and a Co-Director of University College London’s Institute of Brand and Innovation Law.  Her research interests lie in the area of intellectual property law and, in particular, copyright and the challenges of the digital age. In her work, she often employs comparative and interdisciplinary methodologies.

Daniela’s monograph, Copyright and Collective Authorship: Locating the Authors of Collaborative Work, was published in Cambridge University Press’ Intellectual Property and Information Law series in 2019. In this work she argues for a new interpretative approach to copyright law’s joint authorship test to address the problem of allocating authorship in respect of highly collaborative work. The Court of Appeal cited Daniela’s monograph in a recent dispute about the authorship of the screenplay to the film Florence Foster Jenkins (Kogan v Martin [2019] EWCA Civ 1645).

Daniela holds DPhil, MPhil and BCL degrees from the University of Oxford. During her time at Oxford, she set up the Oxford Intellectual Property Discussion Group, served as an associate editor of the Oxford University Commonwealth Law Journal and held the position of Junior Dean at Worcester College. 

Before moving to the UK, she completed a combined BA (English and French)/LLB (Hons I) degree at the University of Sydney. During her undergraduate studies she volunteered at the Arts Law Centre of Australia. Daniela is admitted to legal practice at the Supreme Court of NSW and has worked as a lawyer in the Sydney office of global commercial law firm, Ashurst (then Blake Dawson Waldron). 

Daniela is currently Faculty Editor of the UCL Journal of Law and Jurisprudence. She teaches and supervises in all areas of intellectual property law.