Intellectual Property Research Institute of Australia

Dr Chris Dent is a Senior Research Fellow with the Intellectual Property Research Institute of Australia and the Centre for Media and Communications Law at the Melbourne Law School. The focus of his work at IPRIA is the patent system and at the CMCL his focus is defamation – both areas of his research benefit from critical, historical and otherwise alternative approaches. The results of his research have been published in leading national and international academic journals. Prior to commencing work at the University of Melbourne he carried out research for the Law Reform Commission of Western Australia and the Victorian Law Reform Commission. His qualifications are from Murdoch University and include a PhD in Law, awarded in 2003.

Associate Professor Paul Jensen, Principal Research Fellow, Melbourne Institute of Applied Economic and Social Research, The University of Melbourne. Associate Professor Paul Jensen is an industrial economist at the University of Melbourne. Although he has
published widely, much of his current research is focused on the economics of innovation and intellectual property. He has a PhD from the Australian Graduate School of Management and has published in prestigious international journals such as Review of Economics and Statistics, Journal of Law & Economics, Strategic Management Journal, Economics Letters, Oxford Economic Papers and Cambridge Journal of Economics. Paul also participates regularly in important policy debates as illustrated by his submission to Government reviews and his publications in the popular press including Australian R&D Review, and the Australian Financial Review. He has provided advice on a wide range of economic issues to numerous national and international agencies including IBM, PricewaterhouseCoopers, the OECD, the European Commission, the Productivity Commission, and NSW Treasury. He was also an expert panel member on the Australian Federal Government’s National Innovation Systems Review and WIPO’s Roundtable on “IP and SMEs”.

Associate Professor Don O'Sullivan joined IPRIA  as a Research Fellow  in 2010. Don is Associate Professor of Marketing at Melbourne Business School. He  joined the faculty at Melbourne Business School in 2008 from University College Cork, Ireland.   Don recieved his PhD in Marketing from the National University of Ireland in 2005. Don's principal academic interest is in the impact of marketing activities on company performance.  His current resarch focuses on the relationship between intangible market based assets and various aspects of performance.  His research has been published in the European Journal of Marketing,  the International Journal of Research in Marketing, the Journal of Marketing  and Marketing Letters  among others .  Don  was a founding memner of the Academic Advisory board of the Chief Marketing Officers (CMO) Council of the USA.  He led  Council's Marketing Performance Measurement (MPM) research program, and is a co-author of the Council's Report on this topic.

Dr Alfons Palangkaraya, Senior Research Fellow, Melbourne Institute of Applied Economic and Social Research, The University of Melbourne. Alfons has a PhD in Economics from Oregon State University, specialising in Industrial Economics and International Trade. His current research focuses on empirical firm-level productivity analysis and knowledge spill-overs. He will participate in various research projects at ipria, including the R&D and Intellectual Property Scoreboard.

Russell Thomson commenced as a Research Fellow at the Melbourne Institute of Applied Economic and Social Research in 2009. Russell submitted his PhD at Australian National University in September 2008. His thesis considers the determinants of investment in industrial research and development (R&D), with a particular focus on the role of tax policy. Also at ANU Russell was the 2005 recipient of the Chris Higgins prize for applied econometrics. Between 2002 and 2009 Russell was employed with the Commonwealth Department of Infrastructure, Transport, Regional Development and Local Government. While at the Department Russell managed research projects on the general aviation sector and the infrastructure construction industry. He also worked as a policy analyst on issues affecting rural and regional Australia, including competition policy, structural adjustment, access to finance and taxation.

Professor Ian O Williamson joined IPRIA in September 2006 as a Research Fellow.  Ian received a Ph.D. in Organizational Behavior from the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill in 2000 and holds a BS in Organizational Behavior from Miami University (Ohio).  He currently is an Associate Professor in the area of Human Resource Management at the Melbourne Business School.  Prior to joining the Melbourne Business School, Ian spent five years on the faculty of the Robert H. Smith School of Business at the University of Maryland.  Ian’s research focuses on how organizations recruit, select, and retain employees.  His emphasis is on understanding how firms hire and manage highly skilled knowledge workers, such as top executives, information technology workers, consultants, scientists and lawyers.  His current research focuses on the role of human resource practices in driving firm innovation.  One project in this domain examines how the hiring and deployment of in-house patent attorneys influences the ability of firms to generate patents from their R&D efforts.

Dr Lachlan Wilson, Research Fellow, Melbourne Law School. Lachlan is currently undertaking research into an analysis of patent activities of pharmaceutical companies to assess the validity of concerns raised over the evergreening debate. Lachlan is also investigating the impact of differences in patent examination procedures in Australia, the United States and Europe. Lachlan is a registered Patent and Trade Mark Attorney and previously has practised as a Patent and Trade Mark Attorney and worked as the Intellectual Property Manager at the Walter and Eliza Hall Institute of Medical Research. Lachlan has a background in science, having undertaken many years of laboratory research and gained his PhD in the field of biotechnology.

Prior to returning to the Law School, Vicki was employed by the Federal Court of Australia as a Research Associate.  She also worked for a number of years for law firms in Melbourne and California.  She is admitted to practice in Victoria and is a member of the State Bar of California.

Vicki is the subject co-ordinator and a lecturer in “Trade Marks and Related Rights” and also lectures Corporations Law in the LLB.  She is also a research fellow with IPRIA and the editor of The Fortnightly Review at www.fortnightlyreview.info