Activités

2022-2025

REMEDIS

Together with the University of Saint-Louis (USL-B) and the University of Luxembourg (UL), the CRIDES participates in the “REgulatory and other solutions to MitigatE online DISinformation” (REMEDIS) project.  This interdisciplinary project aims to provide innovative regulatory frameworks and legally compliant socio-technical solutions to monitor online disinformation and its effect.  Researchers in digital law, social science, information and communication, history and computer science will investigate the issue of disinformation by working on specific use cases such as the Covid-19 infodemic and offer regulatory and technical remedies for disinformation.

The REMEDIS project will focus on regulatory solution in order to offer new legal and non-legal instruments to better balance the social responsibility of online platforms with the freedom of expressions of user and on technical solutions  to design legally-attentive procedures and protocols to question the origin and integrity of a diversity of news and to build measures and models of its process of disclosure, information flow and reception. Furthermore, REMEDIS aims to support self-awareness and a critical approach to disinformation in the context of content-moderation activities and media education.

More information is available at: https://projectremedis.wordpress.com/

2023-ongoing

Unitary Patent and the Unitary Patent Court

Since the 1st of June 2023, after years of negotiations, setbacks and postponements, the European patent with unitary effect (EPUE) is a reality, and the Unified Patent Court (UPC) has started its activities

Concerned by the deficiencies of the system proposed, at a time when the UPCA was still not in force, a group of IP scholars and professionals tried to warn the lawmakers and propose amendments or alternatives to the Unitary Patent Package. This process led to the signature of a motion by more than 60 scholars and IP professionals “urg[ing] all the decision-makers and persons involved in the process of adjusting the UPCA, following the withdrawal of the United Kingdom, to pause and to consider alternatives solutions.” 

This group further engaged in a transnational reflection on improving the system through workshops and conferences. In 2023, this group published a monograph entitled “The Unitary Patent Package & Unified Patent Court, Problem, Possible improvement and alternative”, reflecting most of the ideas that emerged during these months of research and dialogues. 

Today, the group continues to monitor the implementation of the Unitary Patent and the first steps of the Unitary Patent Court.

2021-ongoing

Projet DRAILS

A l’initiative conjointe du CRIDES et du CPDR de l’UCLouvain et des chercheurs de l’USL-Bruxelles, le "Research Group on Data, Robotics, Artificial Intelligence, Law and Society" (DRAILS) a été fondé en 2021. Ce groupe a pour objectif de réunir des chercheurs et experts en sciences sociales et humaines afin de constituer à terme un pôle de recherche consacré à l’étude interdisciplinaire de la transformation numérique de la société et de l’économie, et aux régulations en matière de données, robotique et intelligence artificielle par le droit, l’éthique et d’autres normes.

Plus d'informations sont disponibles à l'adresse suivante: https://drails.org/

2019 - 2023

PROSEco ARC (Action de Recherche Concertée) on digital plateforms regulation

The project is entitled Platforms Operations and Regulation in the Sharing Economy (PROSEco). In recent years, many innovative sharing economy platforms (SEPs) had a strong impact on their stakeholders: service providers and consumers alike. The sharing economy is not only a land of promises but also of great perils. Even fast-growing and global for-profit platforms like Uber are still struggling to make a profit, while the failure rate of startups is higher than in other sectors. Also, many non-profit SEPs fail to stay active. For both types of platforms, the road to success is paved with a number of operational, economic, and legal challenges, which directly stem from their innovative business model.

These multifaceted challenges call for an interdisciplinary approach to answer our overarching research question: How can platforms in the sharing economy deliver long-lasting value for their stakeholders and for society as a whole? Our objective with this research project is to conduct a fine-grained analysis of the implications of the sharing economy, combining researchers from operations research, economics, and law.

A more detailed description of the research project can be found here: https://www.ipdigit.eu/2019/03/proseco-a-sparkling-research-project-1/

2019 - 2022

SHINE

The CRIDES has been awarded with a grant by the European Commission (Erasmus+Jean Monnet Actions) to conduct a research in the field of the sharing economy (SHINE. SHaring Economy and INequalities across Europe).

The joint initiative (Universitat de València - UV (action leader), Universitat de Barcelona, Alma Mater Studiorum - Università di Bologna & Universitá Di Palermo - Facoltá Di Giurisprudenza) focused on the social and economic consequences of the different models of market regulation and digital intermediation in the so-called "sharing economy", as well as on the policy responses to cope with the emerging forms of inequalities that these models are exacerbating. The activities of the SHINE Network between 2019 and 2022 included not only academic research, but also training courses and collaboration with institutions and other economic agents, such as public administrations and technological poles in various European countries. The research team of the CRIDES specifically focus on the WP “digital discrimination in the sharing economy: pitfalls and legal design strategies for online platforms”. CRIDES researches involved in the project are Rossana Ducato, Enguerrand Marique and Alain Strowel.

2019-2023

INTERLINK

INTERLINK is H2020 project funded by the call “DT-GOVERNANCE -05-2018-2019-2020: New forms of delivering public goods and inclusive public services.” Governance is being transformed by new approaches to delivering public services which allow for the involvement of citizens and various other actors. The challenge is to critically assess and support as needed this transformation based on an open collaboration and innovation platform supported by ICT (government as a platform) and on an open environment and ecosystem with clear frameworks and guidelines for modular service quality (‘government as a service’) in accordance with the EU eGovernment Action Plan 2016-2020 32 and the European Interoperability Framework Implementation Strategy. The team of the CRIDES is responsible for the ethical and legal questions orbiting around the project.

2024-2028

Together with the University of Namur, the CRIDES participates in the Law, Emotion and Disinformation (LED) project. The project aims at determining “what legal mechanisms should be put in place to effectively regulate the use of AI-enabled emotion recognition and exploitation in the dissemination of online disinformation”. The project adopts a comprehensive approach, focusing on both the emotional reception and curating of disinformation content. The project follows a dual approach: on one hand, it focuses on how the right to quality information can be invoked to strengthen user resilience against the dissemination of online disinformation through emotion recognition and exploitation, and on the other hand, which regulatory methods would be the most efficient to prevent abusive emotion recognition and exploitation and reduce the spread of online disinformation.

LED’s societal impact is directed at four categories of beneficiaries: citizens, civil society, journalists, and institutions. LED aims to provide those different actors with guidelines and recommendations based on their research outputs and to create a forum of discussion for those different stakeholders through the organizing of conferences and workshops. LED is financed by the FNRS under the WelChange programme.

Thèses en cours

Intellectual Property Right as a constitutional right : an Analysis of the Indigenous Traditional Knowledge in Chile from an International Perspective. - ALARCON PORFLIDTT Bernardo
Co-regulation and transparency as key principles for fighting online disinformation under EU law - DE MEYERE Jean
State aid control, protection of the fundamental freedoms, Code of Conduct and other European Union instruments for a European R&D fiscal policy. - FLAMINI Alessandra
Horizontal agreements : A behavioural view on the effectiveness of rules and sanctions for individual decision-makers within various corporate structures. - KARZIS-ANASTASIOU Agis
L’autonomie décisionnelle des consommateurs d’objets connectés FRUY Gaëlle
Does 3D Printing get along with trade regulation? A complementary, comparative and systemic approach, LEYS David
Regulating digitized network industries: revisiting the concept of ‘infrastructure, DUCUING Charlotte

Activités d'enseignement

A Louvain la Neuve

Vincent Cassiers :

LDROI1306, Droits réels et intellectuels
LDROP2103, Droit des contrats relatifs à la propriété intellectuelle
LEPL2214, Droit, régulation, contexte juridique

François Wéry :

LDROP2101, Management of Intellectual Property Rights

Anne-Lise Sibony :

LDREU2206, EU Internal Market Law
LDREU2207, European Consumer Law
LDROI2150, Méthodologie de la recherche en droit

Alain Strowel :

LDROI2100, Séminaire d'accompagnement du mémoire en droits intellectuels et du numérique,
LDROI2112, Digital Law,
LDROP2102, Droits intellectuels et nouvelles technologies,
LDROP2104, Clinic on European Digital Rights, Law, and Design
LEUSL2113, Digital Europe

Enguerrand Marique :

LDREU2202, Politiques européennes
LDRHD2205, Questions approfondies de droit de l’entreprise
LDROI2112, Digital Law
LDROP2041, International Business Agreements
LDROP2104, Clinic on European Digital Rights, Law, and Design
LEUSL2113, Digital Europe

A Saint-Louis Bruxelles

Luc Desaunettes :

HDDR1360, Intellectual Property Law