Michel Vivant

Full professor at Sciences Po ;
Academic director of the intellectual property program of the master''s in Droit économique.

Prof. Vivant was a lecturer at the law school in Montpellier and a member of the bar there from 1972-1976. He earned the CAPA post-graduate legal qualification and subsequently received the Lauréat de l''Ordre. He passed the agrégation in 1980, holds a doctorate in law and was named laureate of the law school six times.

Prof. Vivant first taught in Pau and soon joined the Montpellier law school faculty. After directing the IRETIJ there (a pioneering institute focusing on technology and law), he chose to pursue an unusual, multi-disciplinary approach to intellectual property and founded the ERCIM (an intellectual property research group) and the post-graduate DEA and master''s in intellectual property law.

Dean of the School of Law and Economics and vice-president of the Université Montpellier 1, he has held various academic positions and served on the science ethics and scientific research committees of the national research institution, the Centre national de la recherche scientifique. He is often called as an expert, including by the European Commission and Council of Europe. He served as the Council''s science expert for the drafting of the Convention on Cybercrime. He was also a member of the French Ministry of Justice''s committee on the law of evidence (1998-2000) and the Council of State''s committee on the Internet and the law. He currently serves on the Conseil supérieur de la propriété industrielle.

He joined the Sciences Po faculty in 2007, where he directs the intellectual property specialization in the Droit économique program. Michel Vivant received an honorary doctorate from the University of Heidelberg at the age of 41. He has published on all aspects of intellectual property in more than 15 countries and has been a guest or associate professor at many universities around the world, such as the Vargas Foundation (Rio de Janeiro), Université Laval (Québec), Université de Louvain-la-Neuve and the University of Can Tho (Vietnam) among others. He is also a professor at the Centre d''Etudes Internationales de la Propriété intellectuelle in Strasbourg. To date, he has supervised 70 doctoral candidates in law, both French and international.

Prof. Vivant has also maintained a strong commitment to legal practice. He consults extensively with businesses, including law firms, in France and abroad and serves as an arbitrator, both nationally and internationally, in the area of new technologies. Last, he serves as an arbitrator with WIPO in matters of domain name disputes.