Richard Gold

Professor Richard Gold teaches in the area of intellectual property and common law property at McGill University’s Faculty of Law. He was the founding director of the Centre for Intellectual Property Policy. His research centres on understanding the links between innovation, intellectual property and development. He led the International Expert Group on Biotechnology, Innovation and Intellectual Property, a transdisciplinary research team that issued a ground-breaking report on the policies and law of innovation and intellectual property. He has published widely in legal and scientific journals on this topic and is the author of Body Parts: Property Rights and the Ownership of Human Biological Materials (Washington: Georgetown University Press, 1996). Professor Gold leads a cutting-edge initiative to translate academic research in concrete policy for government, industry, universities and NGOs: The Innovation Partnership (TIP). TIP (www.theinnovationpartnership.org) is unique in the world: it is a non-profit corporation dedicated to helping public and private actors in developing as well as developed countries better manage their innovation systems. TIP demonstrates the power of university research to fuel real policy change. For example, Richard Gold provides ongoing advice to UNITAID, an international governmental organisation dedicated to making medicines accessible to the world's poor, on how to construct a patent pool for drugs to fight HIV/AIDS. Prior to creating TIP, Professor Gold actively helped the policy community understand the implications of intellectual property policy. For example, he was Senior Advisor, Intellectual Property, to the Canadian Biotechnology Advisory Committee, Legal Policy Consultant to the Ontario Ministry of Health and Long-Term Care and a consultant to the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development on biotechnology intellectual property issues. He has prepared studies for the World Health Organization and the World Intellectual Property Organization. A former law clerk to Mr. Justice Peter Cory of the Supreme Court of Canada, Professor Gold is a Research Associate at the Health Law Institute at the University of Alberta. Professor Gold was awarded a James McGill Professorship in July 2011.