An expert panel of judges support CLA’s 2021 Copyright Essay Prize

In its second year, the Copyright Essay Prize from the Copyright Licensing Agency (CLA) is gathering more and more interest on social media, with the first entries already coming in and making a bid for the £300 top prize. As we approach the deadline of 30^th June, CLA has now announced the industry experts who will sit on the final judging panel.

Joining the judging panel is author and broadcaster Dr Tom Chatfield; IP academic and author Dr Emily Hudson; solicitor and Burness Paull’s Head of IP Colin Hulme; Jeremy O’Hare of the British Library’s Business and IP Centre; and Head of Rights, Licensing and Permissions at Springer Nature, Silvia Serra. More detailed biographies can be found below.

Phil Hearne, CLA’s Director Education offers thanks to the judging panel:

“We couldn’t be happier that such a collection of experts has agreed to lend their time, knowledge and support to the competition. We are so impressed by the commitment shown by the entrants, and it means so much to know that the hard work of those who make the short-list will be rewarded with such expert scrutiny.”

The competition, open to 16-19-year-old students from UK schools and further education colleges, asks entrants to consider if copyright only protects big companies. It’s a big question, and CLA is looking forward to seeing how the essays choose to interpret the contention and draw on the latest copyright debates.

Entrants have until midnight on Wednesday 30 June to submit their answers. Full guidelines and Terms and Conditions can be found at https://cla.co.uk/essayprize

Silvia Serra is Head of Rights, Licensing and Permissions for Springer Nature. Prior to this role, Silvia has worked for BioMed Central, PharmaVentures and Wolters Kluwer Health in Business Development and as a Director of Sales focusing on the pharmaceutical and academic markets both in Europe and in North America.

In 2015 Silvia completed with Merit the Diploma course at King’s College, London, in Copyright Law in the US, EU and UK. Silvia is a member of the CLAC (Copyright & Legal Affair) within the Scientific, Technical & Medical Association (STM), Co-Chair of the STM Permissions Group and a member of the Copyright Committee within the Association of Learned and Professional Society Publishers (ALPSP).

Silvia is located in the London office at Springer Nature. She is a native Italian but also speaks German and English at the native-level, she is fluent in French, learning Mandarin and taking on some Hindi!

Jeremy O’Hare is an Information Expert in Intellectual Property (IP) at the British Library’s Business & IP Centre and has worked for the British Library in a number of roles since 2006. His background is in business information and his previous role was as a Relationship Manager for Innovating for Growth Scale-ups, a business support programme for established and growing businesses. During that time he has worked with IP lawyers addressing the many and varied IP needs of a growing business. Currently he presents the Centre’s series of intellectual property workshops and one to one clinics. Jeremy is a self-confessed ‘IP-nerd’ who also writes for the British Library’s Innovation and Enterprise blog as well as promoting the importance and value of IP to a diverse range of businesses from all sectors, from start-up to scale-up. When not ‘doing IP’, he loves spending time with his family and two year old daughter, who is already a promising Lego engineer.

Colin Hulme is Head of IP at law firm Burness Paull. He is the only IP litigator in Scotland with a Band 1 ranking in Chambers UK and in the Legal 500 Hall of Fame. Colin is one of only a handful of litigators to be accredited as an IP specialist by the Law Society of Scotland. Managing IP identify him as an “IP Star” in Scotland.

Engaged in all forms of IP and IT disputes work from pharmaceutical patents to trade secrets in the Energy Sector, Colin has a market-leading brand protection practice acting for iconic brands such as Harris Tweed, Scottish FA, SRU, Highland Spring and Ron Lawson. His team is behind Sky, Phonographic Performance Limited (PPL), PRS for Music and PicRights copyright enforcement campaigns. He is an associate member of CITMA, sits on the ADR Committee at INTA and holds an LLM in IT and Telecommunications Law.

Dr Emily Hudson is Reader in Law, Director of Undergraduate Studies and Chair of Assessments at the Dickson Poon School of Law, King’s College London. She has a particular research interest in copyright law and is author of the book Drafting Copyright Exceptions: From the Law in Books to the Law in Action (Cambridge University Press, 2020). Emily teaches onto a number of intellectual property modules at King’s, as well as teaching legal reasoning to first year students. She has previously held posts at the University of Oxford, University of Queensland and Melbourne Law School.

Dr Tom Chatfield is a British writer, broadcaster and tech philosopher. His seven books exploring contemporary culture—most recently Live This Book! (Penguin) and Critical Thinking (SAGE Publishing), researched as a Visiting Associate at the Oxford Internet Institute—are published in over two dozen languages. In October 2017, he signed a two-book deal to write international conspiracy thrillers set in the world of the dark net for Hodder.

Tom is interested in improving our understanding of digital technology, and its uses in policy, education and engagement. A launch columnist for the BBC’s worldwide technology site, BBC Future, Tom writes and commentate widely in the international media, as well as guest lecturing at universities in the UK and Europe. He is a regular on BBC radio and television, and broadcasts around the world.