Inaugural Lectures are a celebration of our Professors, as they present an overview of their contribution to their field, as well as highlight its latest developments. The lecture is open to both members of the university community and the wider public, and is followed by a reception in the Great Hall.

Title: A Sacred Space? The regulation of advertising for major sporting events

Special protection will be available to designated sporting events when the Sporting Events Bill ends its Parliamentary journey (and it may even have completed it by December). This legislation will provide a new dedicated right to prevent unauthorised associations being made by traders between their good and services and a sporting event. It will also enable the creation of “clean” zones around event venues; so absolute that even aeroplanes need special exceptions. The lecture will examine these anti-ambush marketing laws and whether it is appropriate to allow them to be applied to such a wide range of events. Going beyond the Olympics and similar massive events to those like the U21 UEFA Championships which might get protection because it is of “strategic” significance. It will also give particular attention to the changes made during the passage of the Bill which moved its scope from the exceptional to the routine so enabling regular events like Wimbledon to apply for perpetually renewable intellectual property rights and to make SW19 an ad free zone.

Professor Phillip Johnson

Phillip Johnson joined the Dickson Poon School of Law as a Professor of Law in 2025. He was previously a Professor of Commercial Law at Cardiff University from 2014-2025 and before that an Associate Professor of Intellectual Property Law at University College Dublin 2012-14. He worked as a government lawyer from 2002-7 and was a legal adviser to the Intellectual Property Office from 2003-7 during which time he worked on implementing EPC 2000, the Patent Law Treaty, the WIPO Performances and Phonogram Treaty and, most pertinently, he advised on the intellectual property provisions of what became the London Olympics Games and Paralympics Games Act 2006. He left the government to return to private practice, and he is now a member of Hogarth Chambers; he also continues to sit as an Appointed Person (a tribunal judge) hearing trade mark and design appeals from the Intellectual Property Office. His publications over the last few years include Roughton, Johnson and Cook on Patents (6^th Ed Butterworths 2026), Bently, Sherman, Gangjee and Johnson, Intellectual Property Law (7^th Ed Oxford 2026), Ambush Marketing and Brand Protection (3^rd Ed, Oxford 2021), Intellectual Property, Free Trade Agreements and the United Kingdom: The Continuing Influence of European Union Law (Edward Elgar 2021), and The Booksellers’ Bill 1884 Legislating in the 18^th Century: A view from Sir Henry Cavendish’s Parliamentary Diary (Wildy 2022). He is a Fellow of the Academy of Social Sciences, the European Law Institute, the Royal Historical Society and the Chartered Institute of Arbitrators as well as being a Senior Fellow of the Higher Education Academy.

Programme

18:00-19:00 Lecture

19:00-20:00 Drinks Reception