Jean Monnet Round Table on EU policy on AI and Innovation

The objective is to foster discussion on a societally relevant and controversial topic, namely what the EU policy on AI and Innovation entails and whether it is adequate to foster innovation in and through AI. We aim at generating ideas, filtering out the best and discussing ways to implement them.

The format of the roundtable is informal, taking the shape of a debate where participants come together to reach a solution, in a dialogue with each other and the audience. Our panelists consist of 4 bachelor students (3rd year) from the course Intellectual Property and the Digital Single Market, Dr. Eva Lichtenberger, Dr. Stef van Gompel and Mr. Yannis Skoulikaris. Dr. Anke Moerland will be chairing the roundtable. Please join us online - you will be provided the link after you registered here.

Profile of the speakers

Speakers:

Dr. Eva Lichtenberger was active in politics for 25 years, as a member of the Tyrolean  and the Austrian Parliament  and as a government member in Tyrol, participated in the Convention for a European Constitution. From 2004 to 2014 she was a Member of the European Parliament with a focus on transport and law. Since 2012 she has been working with the Centre for European Studies (CEPS) in Brussels on topics related to the reform of the European institutions and artificial intelligence. In her work in the European Parliament's Committee on Legal Affairs she dealt intensively with the new legal issues that have arisen with the Internet - especially in the areas of data protection and IPRs.

Dr. Stef van Gompel is associate professor at the Institute for Information Law (IViR) and director of the Glushko & Samuelson Information Law and Policy Lab. In 2011 he received his doctorate from the University of Amsterdam. He is specialized in intellectual property law and, in particular, in national and international copyright law, on which he has written various publications.

Yannis Skoulikaris has worked for 30 years at the European Patent Office (EPO), first as patent examiner for computer technology, then for 17 years as Director Patent Granting Process in Information & Communications Technology. He has shaped the EPO practice in examining software and AI inventions as the co-chair of the committee drafting the Guidelines for computer-implemented inventions. He is currently managing director of PatentMind Netherlands, an IP consulting and training organization.

Students:

Alexander Merkulov is a student trainee at the Maastricht Centre for European Law. He is also serving his term as a student representative on the programme committee for the bachelors programme 'European Law School'. Alexanders interest lies primarily in European Competition Law and its interplay with other areas such as intellectual property and environmental law. 

Thijs Mijnhout is in currently finishing his European Law School bachelor.  His interest in European politics and policy in relation to the field of AI and innovation was sparked during the Jean Monnet course. A constructive conversation about how we can change and improve our lives has always been something Thijs wants to contribute to. 

Eno Scheeren studied Dutch law in the bachelor and master track at the University of Maastricht. When he realized that the overarching issues on a European level caught my attention, he enrolled in the European Market Integration and Law track, and chose to use bachelor extra-curricular courses in order to gain some more knowledge European law. Technology, law and data protection are his main interests at the moment, and he recently obtained my ECPC-B certification in Data Protection of Maastricht University. He hopes to combine this knowledge in order to prepare and evolve EU policy with regard to technological innovation and development in the future.

Sini Silvén is currently finishing her European Law School bachelor at Maastricht University. She has a long-term interest in the intersection of technology and law, as well as in the regulation of AI in a commercial context. Although Sini wrote her BA thesis on international commercial arbitration, she is also more broadly intrigued by the interrelation of states and businesses in the changing legal landscape. She hopes to contribute to open conversation about the opportunities and challenges that EU policy development faces regarding technological innovation.