Dr Mariela de Amstalden

Dr Mariela de Amstalden

Birmingham Law School
Assistant Professor in Intellectual Property and Innovation Law
Head of Accreditations and Risks

Dr Mariela de Amstalden joined Birmingham Law School in September 2021. Her research explores the legal implications of emerging biotechnologies, in particular animal cell-cultivation, and their implications for international economic law and global governance. Her monograph, Global Food Governance: Implications of Food Safety and Quality Standards in International Trade Law (Berne: Lang 2015) explored how the notion of legal standards in international law can be interpreted to ensure that global food demands are met. She has experience in private practice and the judiciary and has published a number of peer-reviewed articles about the law of emerging biotechnologies, food and public health regulation at the intersection with international economic law and global governance.

Qualifications

  • 2015 PhD in International Economic Law, University of Lucerne, Faculty of Law, Lucerne (Switzerland)
  • 2012 LL.M. in Intellectual Property Rights, VU Amsterdam, Amsterdam (The Netherlands)
  • 2009 MLaw in Transnational Legal Studies, University of Lucerne, Faculty of Law, Lucerne (Switzerland)

Biography

Prior to joining the University of Birmingham, Mariela de Amstalden was a Visiting Research Fellow at the Scottish Centre for IP and IT Law (SCRIPT), Edinburgh Law School, where she initiated work on the law of cell-cultivated technologies. Previous appointments include a lectureship in Public Law at the University of St. Gallen (HSG), Postdoctoral Research Fellowship at the Peter A. Allard School of Law, University of British Columbia and a Research Fellowship at Melbourne Law School, University of Melbourne. She has been a visiting scholar at the Lauterpacht Centre for International Law, University of Cambridge and at the Institute for International Economic Law, Georgetown University. Alongside private practice experience in Switzerland with Schellenberg Wittmer and CMS Erlach Poncet in their dispute resolution departments located in Zurich, Mariela has consulted for the Swiss Department of Public Health and United Nations Institute for Training and Research (UNITAR) on issues related to trade in foodstuffs and sustainable development law, respectively.

Teaching

  • Intellectual Property Law
  • European Union Law
  • International Trade Law and Policy
  • Preferential Trade Agreements
  • Global Competition Law.

Postgraduate supervision

• International Economic Law, including the law of the World Trade Organisation
• Intellectual Property Rights, particularly Trademarks and Patent Law
• Innovation Law, particularly emerging transformative technologies like cell-cultivation and artificial intelligence regulation
• Public International Law and International Dispute Settlement
• Comparative Law, including civil law

Research

My research work focuses on intellectual property (IP) rights, technology and innovation law as well as global economic governance. In broad terms, this work examines the trajectories of emerging disruptive technologies, their legal and regulatory pathways and their socio-economi impact. While doing so, it engages in two main strands of inquiry, rooted in distinct but complementary methodological approaches. The first strand, Future Foods, examines the emerging field of cellular agriculture law. It tracks and maps the development of socio-legal frameworks applicable to cell-cultivation technologies as they are used in food innovation. More fundamentally, this work questions whether potentially unavoidable socio-technical scenarios emand a reconceptualisation of intellectual property that is mindful of human ingenuity as an infinite resource, as oppose to perpetuating a paradigm of exhaustion of rights. The second strand of inquiry, Future Flight, studies governance mechanisms for uncrewed aereal vehicles (UAVs) for civilian use, and its implications for the promotion of innovation through 'regulation by IP', asking about the role of agility in 'smart' governance, and the extent to which there is sufficient evidence about emerging novel phenomena, one that allocates a prominent role to regulatory bodies, as agents of socio-economic change, by engaging in 'regulatory activism'. Both interdisciplinary studies aim at contributing new perspectives in the study of the law and the multiple connections between law, technology and innovation, hoping to make an original and significant intervention in current debates about how to address pressing global challenges through legal scholarship, public policy and market economies. More details here.

My previous work addressed the evolution of new governance mechanisms to ensure that global food demands are met. The main research output resulted in a monograph published in the Series Studies on Global Economic Governance, edited by Prof. Thomas Cottier, and was titled ‘Global Food Governance: Implications of Food Safety and Quality Standards in International Trade Law’ (Berne:Peter Lang 2015). This work was premised in the assumption that the law of the World Trade Organisation has succeeded to varying extents in providing a multilateral framework for the development of new food regulatory practices. However, changing trends in the production and distribution of food products, as well as ongoing worldwide outbreaks of food-borne diseases, have questioned the effectiveness of the regulatory status quo. The result is a progressively complex network of food safety and quality standards influencing global trade that are seemingly unable to operate on a domestic and public level alone. I ultimately show how these newly developed food standards are international and private in nature, driven by the increasing globalisation of the food supply chain and the economic and political dominance of non-state actors. Although the use of different regulatory approaches, such as harmonisation, coordination and equivalence, could arguably warrant legal inclusivity, my work shows that the tension created by the public/private legal dichotomy under which these standards materially operate remains unresolved, and asks whether there is a need and for new legal and regulatory structures that guarantee the free flow of goods.   

Publications

Recent publications

Book

Maidana-Eletti, M 2016, Global Food Governance: Implications of Food Safety and Quality Standards in International Trade Law. Studies in Global Economic Law, vol. 15, Verlag Peter Lang AG, Berne. https://doi.org/10.3726/978-3-0351-0917-7

Article

de Amstalden, M 2022, 'Seafood without the sea: Article 20 of the agreement on trade-related aspects of intellectual property rights, the ‘justifiability test’ and innovative technologies in a sustainable blue economy', The Journal of World Investment & Trade, vol. 23, no. 1, pp. 68-94. https://doi.org/10.1163/22119000-12340241

de Amstalden, M & Schafer, B 2022, 'When brand distinctiveness is in the AI of the beholder: trademark law in the age of AI shoppers', New Zealand Yearbook of International Law, vol. 18, pp. 51–84. https://doi.org/10.1163/9789004529953_004

Chapter (peer-reviewed)

de Amstalden, M 2023, Cellular Agriculture and Intellectual Property. in E Fraser, DK, L Newman & R Yada (eds), Technological and Scientific Foundations of Cellular Agriculture. Elsevier.

Amstalden, MM-ED 2023, Global health standards and food security: exploring the double science standard of review under the SPS agreement after India – agricultural products. in LA Jacobs, Y Wada & I Vertinsky (eds), Global Health Security in China, Japan, and India: Assessing Sustainable Development Goals. Asia Pacific Legal Culture and Globalization, University of British Columbia Press, Vancouver. <https://www.ubcpress.ca/global-health-security-in-china-japan-and-india>

de Amstalden, M 2022, Patents: Burden of proof under Article 34 WTO TRIPS. in H Hestermeyer & P-T Stoll (eds), Commentaries on World Trade Law: WTO: Agreement on Trade-Related Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights. Brill, 2022 World Trade Forum, Geneva, Switzerland, 23/09/22.

de Amstalden, M 2022, Patents: Terms of protection under Article 33 WTO TRIPS. in H Hestermeyer & P-T Stoll (eds), Commentaries on World Trade Law: WTO: Agreement on Trade-Related Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights. Brill, 2022 World Trade Forum, Geneva, Switzerland, 23/09/22. https://doi.org/10.1163/0000-0000_WTCO_COM_6045

de Amstalden, M 2022, Trademarks: Special requirements under Article 20 WTO TRIPS. in H Hestermeyer & P-T Stoll (eds), Commentaries on World Trade Law: WTO: Agreement on Trade-Related Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights. Brill, 2022 WTO Public Forum, Geneva, Switzerland, 23/09/22. https://doi.org/10.1163/0000-0000_WTCO_COM_6026

de Amstalden, M 2022, Trademarks: exceptions under Article 17 WTO TRIPS. in H Hestermeyer & P-T Stoll (eds), Commentaries on World Trade Law: WTO: Agreement on Trade-Related Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights. Brill.

de Amstalden, M 2022, Trademarks: Rights conferred under Article 16 WTO TRIPS. in H Hestermeyer & P-T Stoll (eds), Commentaries on World Trade Law: WTO: Agreement on Trade-Related Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights. Brill.

de Amstalden, M 2022, Trademarks: protectable subject matter under Article 15 WTO TRIPS. in H Hestermeyer & P-T Stoll (eds), Max Planck Commentaries on World Trade Law: WTO: Trade-Related Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights. Brill. https://doi.org/10.1163/0000-0000_WTCO_COM_6026

Abstract

de Amstalden, M & Schafer, B 2021, 'From Leibniz Characteristica Universalis to Google Translate: Machine Translation as Challenge and Opportunity for International Law', The 16th Annual Conference of the European Society of International Law, Stockholm, Sweden, 9/09/21 - 11/09/21.

Anthology

de Amstalden, M, Moran, N & Asmelash, H (eds) 2023, Revisiting International Economic Law: New Approaches and Emerging Issues. European Yearbook of International Economic Law, Springer, Cham.

Paper

de Amstalden, M 2021, 'When Brand Distinctiveness is in the AI of the Beholder: Challenges to Trademark Law in the Age of AI Shoppers', Paper presented at Seventh Biennial Global Conference of the Society of International Economic Law (SIEL), Milan, Italy, 7/07/21 - 9/07/21.

de Amstalden, M & Schafer, B 2020, 'Cultured Meat: Of Regulations, Trademarks and Transformative Biotechnologies', Paper presented at 9th Annual Conference of the Society of International Economic Law for Early Career Researchers (PEPA/SIEL), Jerusalem, Israel, 17/05/20 - 20/05/20.

View all publications in research portal

Expertise

  • International economic law, intellectual property rights, food and public health regulation

Languages and other information

  • English, German, Spanish