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Written by:
Paul Holland
Posted:
15 Oct 2021

Trinity Hall WYNG Fellow in Law Dr David Erdos has taken up a new role as co-director of the Centre for Intellectual Property and Information Law (CIPIL) which is based at the Faculty of Law in the University of Cambridge.

He took the co-directorship this month, working alongside his colleague Professor Grosse Ruse-Kahn. Dr Erdos was previously the Deputy Director of the Centre, a position he held from October 2017.

The Centre for Intellectual Property and Information Law (CIPIL) was established in 2004 to foster the study of all aspects of intellectual property and information law. Over recent years it has been expanding its work in the latter area including organising a conference on Intermediary Liability and Responsibility in 2018 and publishing a range of new resources including the travaux of the most important EU information law instruments, a compendium of both current and historic national data protection laws within European countries and a comprehensive set of reports on the interface between freedom of expression and information and data protection in each of these countries.

Dr Erdos said: “I am humbled to be taking on this new position alongside my colleague Professor Henning Grosse-Ruse Kahn. I am certainly not replacing Professor Lionel Bently who will remain a lynchpin of the Centre including as Deputy Director. However, I am very much looking forward to playing a new role in promoting intellectual property and information law especially at such a challenging time for these twin bodies of law”.

Dr Erdos is an expert on data protection and information law more broadly. His current research explores the nature of data protection including, most especially in its interaction with freedom of expression and freedom of research. In addition, Dr Erdos continues to have a research interest in bill of rights and related constitutional developments, especially in the UK and other ‘Westminster’ democracies.

His research has recently been cited in submissions made against Google in relation to its search engine and the “Right to be Forgotten”.


The travaux préparatoires (French: “preparatory works”, in the plural) are the official record of a negotiation. Sometimes published, the “travaux” are often useful in clarifying the intentions of a treaty or other instrument.