Latest blog articles

M-EPLI, along with the Maastricht Law & Tech Lab and the Institute of Data Science, hosted the online webinar ‘Researching Discrimination in E-Commerce and Online Advertising’ on the 4th and 5th of March 2021. Throughout the two-day event, speakers from different countries, institutes and...

Written by Yu Yan & Michael Faure.

The Chinese word “economy” is originated from a famous idiom called “经世济民” (jing shi ji min), which suggests that a prosperous society is not only about economic success but also about the financial well-being of the general population. Microinsurance (the...

Can a single colour alone be a trademark? The question is neither new nor unexplored. However, old wine in a new bottle is presented by the General Court in its decision rejecting an attempt to register a shade of colour for inhalers for asthma and related pharmaceutical preparations, reinstating...

Using the trade mark of someone else to describe how your own products relate to the trademark products is allowed under certain circumstances. Recently, the law changed in this respect, leaving the application of some factors uncertain.

On the 29 and 30 of October 2020 the Academy of European Law hosted an online conference on the recent developments in the European Law of Civil Procedure. Over these two days different speakers presented on new developments with regards to key legal instruments such as the Brussels I (recast)...

On 15 October, the Swedish Consumer Agency, its Scientific Council and Maastricht University (in particular the Law & Tech Lab) hosted the webinar 'Consumers and businesses in digital markets – An unequal relationship?’, focused on bringing together the perspectives of national consumer authorities...

With AI’s recent breakthrough in machine learning, now more than ever inventors are looking for ways to protect AI systems. But obtaining patent protection depends on the right claims.

A new copyright reform (Music Modernization Act) was passed in the US Senate in 2018, comprising reforms on the term of protection for works played through online digital music services such as Spotify, Apple Music and Pandora. However, can copyright keep on being repeatedly extended? Is this...

E-personhood is a term proposed in a draft report by the EU Parliament, about civil rules and laws on Robotics. This legal status aims at ensuring rights and responsibilities for the most capable AI agents. An intense debate about its usefulness is taking place in the EU.

The advancement of big data may lead to a revolution in the health sector by enabling the personalization of medicine. However, there are still uncertainties regarding the ownership of the data available, and also whether users should be entitled to compensation for the utilisation of their data.