Profile of JIPLP writers: Eddy Ventose

Eddy Ventose

This is the third in an occasional series of features on contributors to JIPLP, it is our pleasure to Eddy Ventose.  Eddy has provided some of the more detailed and cogent analyses of European patent law to appear in the journal, as well as some punchy Current Intelligence pieces. So what is Eddy all about? Let him speak for himself:

"My interest in intellectual property started during my undergraduate years at the University of the West Indies, Cave Hill Campus, although the subject was not offered there at that time. I did intellectual property as part of the LLM at the University of Cambridge and decided subsequently to focus on patent law which I found most challenging and intellectually stimulating. This explains why I decided to read for the D,Phil in medical patent law at the University of Oxford.

I have been a Lecturer in Law at the University of the West Indies Cave Hill Campus for just over four years. I am currently the Deputy Dean (Graduate Studies and Research) and Director of the LL.M. Programmes.

My interests broadly relate, on the one hand, to the ways in which patent law can foster research and innovation in the pharmaceutical industry, and, on the other, to the ways in which in doing so it may encroach on the activities of physicians when they treat their patients. For now, I have focused on three main areas of my main research agenda in relation to intellectual property law: first, whether patent protection may be provided for methods of treatment of the human or animal body by surgery, therapy and diagnostic methods practised on the human or animal body; secondly, whether the development of new dosage or treatment regimes are patentable; and, thirdly the impact of the exclusion for methods of medical treatment will have on new technologies, namely, gene therapy, genetic production of diagnostic aids, cell bombardments, stem cell research and nanotechnology therapy. I have published broadly in this field and my book, Medical Patent Law: The Challenges of Methods of Medical Treatments, will be published by Edward Elgar Publishing in 2011.

I am also interested in other areas of intellectual property rights, having also published on personality rights, copyright law and trade mark law. Recently I set up a blog, IP in the Caribbean, which seeks to provide a focal point for the dissemination of new developments in and discussion on all aspects of intellectual property and related rights in the Commonwealth Caribbean.

I am also a consultant at Delany Finisterre, a Corporate and Commercial law firm in Barbados, specialising in intellectual property and corporate transactions. After training at City law firm Slaughter and May and being admitted as a Solicitor of the Supreme Court of England and Wales, I returned to the Caribbean to pursue an academic career and re-qualified as an Attorney-at-Law to practice law in the Caribbean.  I have a keen research interests in aspects of Caribbean public law, in particular legitimate expectations and exhaustion of remedies in judicial review actions. My other areas of interest are E-Commerce Law, Information Technology Law, Public Service Law, Administrative Law, Corporate Finance Law and Law and Legal Systems.

When not working, I enjoy taking trips to Saint Lucia, where I grew up, or Martinique, where I was born, to visit friends and family. I also enjoy visiting friends in other Caribbean islands, particularly Jamaica and Trinidad and Tobago. When I am not teaching, researching, or writing, I can be found at a local bar with friends, enjoying a nice rum and coke, or at the beach (in the shade, of course, usually editing one article or other) on the West Coast of Barbados.