Professor Jeremy de Beer is recognized by peers as a world leader in the fields of intellectual property, technology innovation, and international trade and development. He holds the Tier 1 Canada Research Chair in Innovation and Intellectual Property Law at uOttawa’s Centre for Law, Technology, and Society, where he studies and shapes the rules of the global knowledge economy.
He has published five books, nearly 70 peer-reviewed articles and chapters, and dozens more reports and research outputs intersecting law, business, and other academic disciplines. His pathbreaking scholarship covers topics like digital copyright and open licensing, data governance and artificial intelligence, biotechnology patents and innovations in health and agriculture, and the legal frameworks that connect intellectual property, trade, and technology regulation.
Bridging academia with legal practice, Professor de Beer significantly influences bothlaw and policy. His litigation experience includes a portfolio of 15 pleadings before the Supreme Court of Canada, plus cases at the Federal Court of Appeal and in international trade arbitration. His scholarship is cited in the Court’s recent decisions about online copyright royalties and patent infringement remedies. Expert witness work, regular testimony to Parliamentary committees, and numerous research studies advising Canadian government departments and agencies also demonstrate his thought leadership.
Professor de Beer’s global reputation as an expert advisor has produced collaborations with international diplomats and United Nations’ officials in Geneva, African Union leaders in Addis Ababa, and heads of agencies of the European Commission in Brussels. He has helped design national laws and policies for government and inter-governmental agencies in numerous low- and middle-income countries in Africa, Latin America and the Caribbean, and South and Southeast Asia.
A pioneer of international and interdisciplinary research partnerships, nearly two decades ago he and colleagues planted the seeds for a prolific collaborative partnership, which has grown into the globally renowned and award-winning Open African Innovation Research Network, known as Open AIR. Learning from boots-on-ground research and mutually beneficial partnerships across Africa, this pathbreaking work is facilitating solutions to some of society’s most important challenges: pioneering models for open access to educational materials, creating regulatory environments to enhance food security, laying the groundwork for equitable access to life-saving medicines, and most recently reimagining collaborative ways of technology innovation to fight climate change.
In 2024, Professor de Beer was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society of Canada, distinguishing him as one of Canada’s most valued and impactful scholars. The 2023 SSHRC Impact Award recognized his outstanding achievements advancing social scientific research, research training and knowledge mobilization. His exceptional contributions to research and law teaching have also been recognized with awards including the Canadian Association of Law Teachers’ Prize for Academic Excellence, the Charles B. Seton award from the Copyright Society of the USA for significant contribution to scholarship in copyright, and the uOttawa Faculty of Law’s Excellence in Graduate Supervision award.
For students at the Faculty of Law, Professor de Beer teaches a first-year introduction to property law (based on his co-authorship of Canada’s most widely used property law casebook) and a specialized course on intellectual property advocacy. He also supervises a team of roughly a dozen graduate students and post-doctoral associates.
As a well as being a Full Professor at the Faculty of Law, Common Law Section and faculty Member of the Centre for Law, Technology, and Society, he holds appointments as a Senior Fellow at the Centre for International Governance Innovation, a Senior Research Associate at the University of Cape Town’s Intellectual Property Unit in the Department of Commercial Law, and a Visiting Researcher at the University of Johannesburg’s College of Business and Economics.