Welcome to the final Bells & Whistles newsletter of the year!
As we wrap up 2025, we’re ending the year on a thoughtful, slightly nostalgic note. If you’re looking for something meaningful to engage with before the countdown begins, here are two important reminders. First, the SpicyIP–Jhana AI Blog Writing Competition closes tomorrow. If you’ve been planning to submit, consider this your gentle nudge before the deadline.
We’re also closing the year with a truly powerful listen. The latest SpicyIP Podcast episode, “The GI Hurdles We Need to Talk About” featuring Niharika Salar, is the perfect year-end companion. The episode takes you deep into the realities of India’s GI ecosystem: the lives and struggles of artisans, the disconnect between law and lived experience, and the many challenges embedded in the GI Act and its implementation. It’s grounded, insightful, and a reflective way to end the year with substance.
BELL OF THE WEEK – Privilege and Property: Essays on the History of Copyright
Edited by Ronan Deazley, Martin Kretschmer & Lionel Bently
This week, we’re closing the year with a true treasure: Privilege and Property, one of the most fascinating collections of essays on the history of copyright.
If you enjoy digging into the roots of legal ideas, this book is nothing short of a gold mine. Each chapter pulls you into the worlds, disputes, people, and printing practices that shaped copyright as we know it. From the Stationers’ Company to early authorship battles, from evolving notions of literary property to the politics and power structures behind “rights.”
It’s intriguing, deeply insightful, and endlessly informative. More than just theory, the essays take you into the rooms, arguments, and historical settings where copyright was born. You keep turning pages because every chapter reveals another story, another conflict, another piece of context that makes modern IP law suddenly make sense.
A perfect year-end read: rich, immersive, and full of discoveries. It is deal for a slow holiday dive into the foundations of our field.
EVENTS
1. Artificial Intelligence and the Trouble for Authorship: Towards a Legal Theory of Effort
22 January 2026 | 01:00 – 02:00 PM GMT | Hybrid (In-person, UCL Faculty of Laws + Virtual)
This lecture explores the nature of authorship, the role of attention and intention in creativity, and the possibility of articulating a legal theory of effort within contemporary copyright law. An increasingly urgent question in the age of AI-generated works. Prof. Johanna Gibson is the Herchel Smith Professor of Intellectual Property Law at Queen Mary University of London, widely recognised for her scholarship at the intersection of IP, creative industries, and legal theory.
Register here | More info
OPPORTUNITIES
SpicyIP–jhana Blogpost Writing Competition 2025
Deadline: 30 December 2025
Organized in collaboration with jhana, the competition will run for six weeks, during which shortlisted entries will be published on the SpicyIP blog after editorial review. The top three entries will be announced in early January 2026. Participants and readers can also access a complimentary one-month jhana.ai Pro account using the promo code SPICYIP to support their research.
More info
1. Call for Applications 2026 — PostGenAI Project (Sciences Po Law School)
For deadline kindly visit the admission page here.
Sciences Po Law School invites applications for the PostGenAI Project, focused on examining the normative and distributive effects of artificial intelligence, generative AI, and automated decision-making systems. Selected candidates will join the Law School’s Doctoral Program and receive funding under the PostGenAI@Paris – Collaborative Acceleration Programme (CAP), part of the AI-NODES initiative. The project is led by Professors Séverine Dusollier, Rebecca Mignot-Mahdavi, and Raphaële Xenidis, and successful applicants will be supervised by at least one of them.
More info
2. CopyrightX: NLSIU (with Harvard Law School)
Deadline: 14 January 2026
National Law School of India University (NLSIU), in collaboration with Harvard Law School (HLS), is inviting applications for CopyrightX: NLSIU, an eight-week hybrid course in comparative copyright law. Running from March 2 to April 30, 2026, the programme is open to students and professionals across South Asia and explores copyright across art, entertainment, and technology, with a strong emphasis on AI, creativity, and global copyright litigation.
More info
3. Government Vacancies: Trade Marks & GIs Examiner and Deputy Director (Examination Reforms)
Deadline: 1 January 2026 | 6:00 PM
(i) Examiner of Trade Marks & Geographical Indications (Vacancy No. 25121401213) — 100 vacancies at the Office of the Controller General of Patents, Designs & Trade Marks, DPIIT, Ministry of Commerce and Industry. Candidates must hold a Degree in Law from a recognized university, with two years’ experience in handling court cases, legal matters, or trade marks and geographical indications.
(ii) Deputy Director (Examination Reforms) — 2 vacancies at the Union Public Service Commission. Candidates must hold a Ph.D. in Humanities, Science, Commerce, Engineering/Technology, or professional courses such as Law, Management, Finance, or Accounts, with five years post-qualification experience in teaching, research, curriculum development, educational testing, examination reforms, or online examination administration.
Applications must be submitted online via the official website by the deadline.
More info
4. Call for Papers: ATRIP Essay Competition 2025 [ATRIP & FICPI]
Submission deadline: 6 February 2026
ATRIP’s Executive Committee, in collaboration with FICPI, invites young researchers (aged 35 or below as of 31 December 2025) to submit essays on any topic relating to intellectual property law, in English or French. The top three papers will be featured on the ATRIP website, with opportunities for publication in the Journal of World Intellectual Property Law or IIC – International Review of Intellectual Property and Competition Law (subject to review). The first-place winner will be invited to present at the 2026 ATRIP Annual Conference at the University of São Paulo, Brazil (28 June – 1 July 2026).
Submit your paper to: admin[at]atrip[dot]org.
More info
Thanks to Lokesh for the heads up on the PostGenAI Project!
All non-sponsored listings featured here are events or opportunities free or nominally charged and ones we think our readers may be interested in. Sponsored listings will be marked as such. Unless specifically mentioned, SpicyIP has no affiliation to anything listed here. Know of an event worth sharing? Write to us at contact[at]spicyip[dot]com.
