Chillin'Competition

To many people, Liege is an old industrial city which has little to offer.

But Liège has a great geographical position. It is just a 100 kms away from Brussels. Thanks to this, it is close from many brainy competition (and IP) professionals. This is what prompted my predecessor Prof. Geradin to create a bilingual LLM in EU Competition and IP law.

Now that we have a 8 years track record, I think I can modestly pretend – pardon the bias – that we have the best, and most likely the cheapest –  several hundred  € – LL.M in competition (and IP) law of Europe :).

Obviously there’s a downside with cheap tuition fees: little money for my research centre. But there’s a big upside: in Liege, we are not bound to award degrees to poor LL.M students that should be failed. Put differently, our evaluation process is not influenced by the risk of losing money out of a decrease in prospective applications  [on second thoughts, it may not be good advertisement to say publicly that we fail students: we do not fail that many].

Now, our LL.M has been increasingly successful in the past years, attracting students from everywhere in Europe and outside (Peru, China, Russia, etc.). I trust the many conferences we organize in Brussels and the opportunities for publication in e-competitions are interesting for prospective students.

This year, we’ll open a full-english version of the LL.M programme. It will be opened to students from far-away countries, who have no background and no professional interest in the French language.  The programme of this English-based LL.M can be found hereafter.

Compulsory Courses:

– Droit européen de la concurrence 60h – Nicolas Petit (ULg) or Advanced European Competition Law (30h + exercices)

– Patents (exercises included) 30h – K. Roox  (Crowell and Moring)

– Droit d’auteur et nouvelles technologies 45h – Alain Strowel (Covington & Burling, FUSL, ULg) or The law and economics of copyrights (with P. Belleflamme) (15h + exercises)

– Trade related aspects of intellectual property rights in the EU and the WTO 30h – Daniel Gervais (Vanderbilt University) et Norman Neyrinck (ULg)

– Trademarks 30h – [TBA]

– Intellectual Property and Competition Law  30h – David Hull (Covington & Burling) et Alain Strowel

– Questions spéciales en droit européen de la concurrence 15h – Jean-Yves Art (Microsoft) et Jean-François Bellis (Van Bael & Bellis) – or Selected issues of EU competition law (Dissertation)

-Legal Writing Seminary 15h – Andrew Fine

– Aspects économiques du droit et de la concurrence 30h – Nicolas Petit

– Droit des aides de l’Etat 30h – Jacques Derenne (Lovells) – or The Law and Economics of anticompetitive State aid

Options  – Competition law (one course to be chosen amongst the two following subjects)

• EU Competition Procedure and Institutions Nicolas Petit
• Case Studies in EU Competition Law Luc Gyselen (Arnold & Porter)

Options – IP Law (Two courses to be chosen amongst the three following subjects)

• The Legal Protection of Designs and Models 10h Charles-Henry Massa (ULg)
• Droit des médias 10h François Jongen (UCL)
• IP Enforcement 10h Christof Karl (Pagenberg)

Compulsory Seminars for 2009-2011

• The law of geographical indications, quality labelling and certification – E. De Gryse (Simon Braun)
• Unfair Competition Law – A Kamperman Sanders (University of Maastricht)
• IP protection for biotechnologies and other technologies – S. Bostijn (University of Amsterdam)
• Related rights – F. Brison (Howrey and KUB)
• Introduction to Belgian Competition Law – C. Verdonck (Altius)
• Intellectual property and innovation technologies management – JF Serrier (Solvay)
• The Regulation of counterfeited goods – R. Munoz (European Commission and ULg)
• Introduction to US Antitrust Law – D. Hull
• Selected questions of private international law in relation to intellectual property rights – P. Wautelet (ULg)
• Pharmaceutical industry – O. Lemaire (Glaxo)
• WTO Law – Intellectual Property and Competition Issues – D. Luff (Luff and Appleton)