CIPPM welcomes Benjamin White, who has started his journey as PhD candidate at Bournemouth University. Prior to joining Bournemouth University, Ben was Head of Intellectual Property at the British Library. He also participated in a 2 year European Commission funded project called Future TDM, looking at the barriers to further uptake in Europe of data analytics and AI technologies. He was probably the first person in Europe to call for a copyright exception for text and data mining back in 2008. The exception is now enshrined in articles 3 and 4 of the Directive (EU) 2019/790 on Copyright in the Digital Single Market.

Ben’s PhD research under the supervision of Professor Maurizio Borghi, Professor Dinusha Mendis and Dr Marc Mimler involves a study of intellectual property and data protection law in regards to the future of AI within the European Digital Single Market. His PhD studentship is co-funded by Bournemouth University’s Jean Monnet Centre of Excellence for European Intellectual Property and Information Rights.