Professor Michael Pendleton

Professor of Law
Ll.B Dip, Juris (Syd), LLM (Lon)

Michael Pendleton is Professor of Law at Murdoch University. LLB, Dip.Jur. (Sydney) LLM (London) Solicitor of the Supreme Court of New South Wales, the Supreme Court of Judicature of England and Wales, and the Supreme Court of Hong Kong SAR, China; Barrister and Solicitor of the Supreme Court of Western Australia and the High Court of Australia; Mediator & Arbitrator of the World Intellectual Property Organisation (WIPO) Arbitration and Mediation Centre, Geneva.

Professor Pendleton was Chairman of the Law Reform Commission of Western Australia between 1991-1993. He taught at the Faculty of Law of the University of Sydney between 1976-79 and was Senior Lecturer in Law in the Faculty of Law, University of Hong Kong (1980-1999). He practised as a solicitor with Bartier Perry & Purcell, Sydney, Bird & Bird, London, Deacons, Hong Kong (Deacons was founded in Hong Kong by Mr Deacon in the 1890s and is the forerunner of various practices of this name around the world) and Blake Dawson Waldron in Australia. He is a member of the Federal Attorney General's Copyright Law Review Committee, the Law Council of Australia's Intellectual Property Committee and the Law Society of Western Australia's Intellectual Property Committee.

Professor Pendleton has written eight books published by major international publishers and over 100 articles and other publications. In a review of Professor Pendleton's 1984 book Law of Intellectual and Industrial Property in Hong Kong, the late Dr Steven Stewart QC, Director of the Common Law Institute for Intellectual Property in London described it as only the second anywhere in the world on intellectual property in the modern unified sense of the word and concept. Prior to this there were books solely on trademarks, or patents, or copyright, or designs, or trade secrets, but never as a totality. Much of this book is about making the case for the contemporary holistic conception of intellectual property rather than the disparate causes of action which in the past existed as "stand alone" areas of law, eg patent or copyright. Prof Pendleton's 1984 book on Hong Kong's intellectual property law was submitted by the American Chamber of Commerce in Hong Kong as an annex to their 1986 submissions to the President of the United States of America on renewal of Hong Kong's Most Favoured Nation (MFN) status under the Generalised System of Preferences (GSP). Prof Pendleton's most recent of eight books is Intellectual Property - a guide to the law in Hong Kong with reference to developments in China, co-authored with Alice Lee of Hong Kong University Law Faculty and published in 2001 by Butterworths. One of Prof Pendleton's articles, "Intellectual Property, Information Based Society and a New International Economic Order - the Policy Options" is widely cited in many texts, case books and indeed in a leading court judgement (Pacific Hogan v Dunlop, the Crocodile Dundee case) by Justice Gummow (presently of the High Court of Australia) in connection with the concept and justification for intellectual property.

Much of Prof Pendleton's work concerns intellectual property law in Hong Kong and China. He taught, practised law and published for ten years in Hong Kong, one of the world's leading jurisdictions for intellectual property law. Prof Pendleton's co-author for over 18 years is Professor Zheng Chengsi, Director of the Intellectual Property Law Institute of the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences in Beijing (one of the Chinese Government's foremost policy formation units) and member of the National People's Congress. Prof Zheng is also China's State Council appointed sole National Expert on Intellectual Property. With Prof Zheng, Prof Pendleton wrote a book on China's Copyright Law in 1991 for CCH and an earlier text on Chinese intellectual property in 1987 for Sweet & Maxwell. They have written many articles and conference papers together.

Currently on leave at School of Law, Chinese University of Hong Kong. Email mpendleton@cuhk.edu.hk

Faculty of Law, University of Sydney