Daniel Gervais, professor of law and director of the Vanderbilt Intellectual Property Program, has been elected to the Academy of Europe (Academia Europaea), a prestigious European society of scientists and scholars which was founded in 1988.
Gervais is the first and only North American law professor to become a member of the Academy.
Gervais, an expert in international copyright and intellectual property law, is the first professor at a U.S. law school to be invited to join the Academy of Europe and one of two Vanderbilt professors to whom the honor has been extended. Joseph Hamilton, the Landon C. Garland Distinguished Professor of Physics at Vanderbilt University, was elected to the Academy in 2011.
The Academy of Europe currently includes more than 2,400 members, about 70 of whom are legal scholars, and 38 Nobel Prize recipients. “This broad assembly of excellence and the pan-European distribution of our members makes the Academia unique amongst other European Academies,” said Lars Walløe, president of the Academy of Europe. “Election to the Academia Europaea is a personal honor that is a distinct recognition by international peers of personal excellence in scholarship within the European convocation of learned and professional scholars.”
Gervais is an expert on the Agreement on Trade-Related Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights (TRIPS Agreement), the most comprehensive multilateral agreement on intellectual property to date, which covers copyright and related rights; trademarks; geographical indications, such as appellations of origin; industrial designs; patents; the layout designs of integrated circuits; and undisclosed information, such as trade secrets and test data. At Vanderbilt, he teaches international and U.S. intellectual property law and an advanced research seminar. He also serves as editor-in-chief of the Journal of World Intellectual Property.
Gervais holds an undergraduate degree from Jean-de-Brébeuf College in Montreal, an LL.B. and LL.M. from the University of Montreal, a doctorate magna cum laude from the University of Nantes, France, and earned an Institute Diploma summa cum laude of Advanced International Studies in Geneva, Switzerland. He will be formally inducted as a new member at a ceremony in Poland in September 2013.
