Professor Waelde’s research interests revolve around the relationship between intellectual property and digital technologies most notably within the fields of copyright and trade marks.  In this her focus is on the interface between intellectual property law and changing technologies, the changes in the law wrought by those technologies, and the impact that those changes have on the way that the law is both perceived and used by the affected communities, exploring ways in which the law may be better calibrated to meet the needs of stakeholders. Professor Waelde’s work reaches out into other domains such as human rights, competition law, international private law and the regulation and promotion of new technologies more generally as they intersect with her core interests.

Professor Waelde has recently been awarded funding for an AHRC Beyond Text network.  During the currency of the project she, along with her network partners, will be examining the extent to which innovative forms of music and dance might be beyond copyright protection and relatedly how they may best be supported and nurtured by cultural policy and cultural economics.  

Professor Waelde is a co-director of SCRIPT: the AHRC Research Centre for Studies in Intellectual Property and Technology Law.  For further details of the work of the Centre see http://www.law.ed.ac.uk/ahrc