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Maureen O'Sullivan

Maureen O'Sullivan
BA, BCL (Cork), LLM (Warwick), PG Cert. HE (UWE, Bristol)

Tel.: 353 (0)91 495627
Room 206, Block T.
Office hours by appointment.
email: maureen.osullivannuigalway.ie

Maureen is on sabbatical leave for 2010

Maureen O'Sullivan holds a BCL from University College Cork and did a research LLM, entitled “The Linux Operating System: A Socio-legal Study” at the University of Warwick in 2001.  She taught on the Property Law course at Warwick for three years and lectured at the University of the West of England, Bristol for a further three years in Land Law, Cyberlaw and Software Licensing and Legislation, a course which she designed for the LLM in Commercial Law.  She also undertook a year long postgraduate course in Teaching and Learning in Higher Education in Bristol and has continued updating

Maureen's research and teaching interests span intellectual property in the digital age, including FLOSS and Creative Commons licensing; the patenting of genetically modified organisms; the Information Society and related policy making, especially in Spain and Latin America; theoretical approaches to property and intellectual property; sociology of law, with an especial focus on law-making in technocracies; and anarchism.

Maureen speaks fluent Spanish and holds a proficiency certificate in Spanish from the Escuela Oficial de Idiomas, Zaragoza, Spain.  She also speaks some Brazilian Portuguese.

TEACHING AND SUPERVISORY INTERESTS

Postgraduate:

PhD and Research Masters Supervision – areas of interest

I welcome enquiries from suitably qualified applicants in the following areas: free/open source licensing; contemporary copyright issues; patenting, biotechnology and bioethics; native title to land and, generally, interdisciplinary topics around law, science, philosophy, literature and sociology.

Masters teaching

Publishing Law: Theory and Practice, in the MA in Literature and Publishing in the English Department. I also supervise dissertations. Involved in the setting up of the LLM in Law, Technology and Governance in the School of Law. I currently supervise dissertations on this module.

I teach on the MA in Arts Policy and Practice in the Huston Film School and supervise essays.

Undergraduate:

• Intellectual Property
• English Land Law
• Sociology of Law
• Law and Social Policy
• Irish Legal System

PUBLICATIONS

Chapters

• O’Sullivan, M., “Lockean Style Property Rights in Land, Software and Genes”, in Mordini, E. (ed.), Ethics and Health in the Global Village, CIC Edizioni Internazionali, Roma 2009.
• “Creatividad Legal para el Mundo de Software Libre”, Libro Blanco de Software Libre en España, 2005, Junta de Extremadura: Merida,  http://www.libroblanco.com/html/index.php?module=ContentExpress&func=display&ceid=28&bid=156&btitle=II%20Libro%20blanco%20(v%200.9)&meid=27

Articles

• O'Sullivan, M., “Creative Commons and Contemporary Copyright: A Fitting Shoe or a Load of Old Cobblers?”, First Monday, Vol. 13, January, 2008, http://firstmonday.org/htbin/cgiwrap/bin/ojs/index.php/fm/article/view/2087/1919.
• 'Sullivan, M., “FLOSS Licensing: Trends, Exposition and Critique”, Panóptica, Vitória, Year 2, n. 10, Nov. 2007 – Feb. 2008, http://www.panoptica.org/2novfev08.htm.
• “The Pluralistic, Evolutionary, Quasi-legal Role of the GNU General Public Licence in Free/Libre/Open Source Software (FLOSS)”, European Intellectual Property Review, Vol 26 Issue 8, August 2004.
• “Governing Against the Grain – Part I”, Journal of Environmental Law and Management, Vol 16 Issue 1, January/February 2004.
• “Making Copyright Ambidextrous: An Expose of Copyleft”, Journal of Information, Law and Technology, December 2002, http://www2.warwick.ac.uk/fac/soc/law/elj/jilt/2002_3/osullivan/.

Consultancies

• “Plan de Alfabetización Tecnológico Solidario en Irlanda”, I Congreso Internacional de Software Libre, Alfabetización Tecnológica y Economía Solidaria, Bogotá, Colombia, November 2007.
• “Aspectos Socio-Legales de Linux”, I Congreso Internacional de Software Libre, Alfabetización Tecnológica y Economía Solidaria, Bogotá, Colombia, November 2007.
• “Best and Worst Practices in Ground Up and Top Down Legislation”, August 2004.  This was an  address to the Brazilian Ministry of Foreign Affairs at a meeting in the Senate, Brasilia, Brazil, to advise on Brazil’s policy-making on free software: http://www.cic.unb.br/docentes/pedro/trabs/freesoft6.html.
• “Law and the Law-Making Process in an Age of High Technology”, August 2004.  This was an address to the Brazilian House of Representative's Science and Technology Committee at a public meeting on social aspects of Brazil’s technology policies: http://www.sergiomiranda.org.br/materias/materias.php?id=284.

Reports

• “Three Roses Report on FLOSS Law: Licensing and Legislation with the GNU GPL”, April 2004, http://www.prelude-portal.org/3roses/uploads/three_roses_report_on_licensing.pdf, EU funded Three Roses project.
• Mangham, A., and O’Sullivan, M., “Open Source Software in Public Administrations”, booklet produced by European Local Authorities’ Telematic Network (ELANET) for an EU-funded Prelude project.

Book review

• Copyright and Other Fairytales, Helle Porsdam (ed.), Cheltenham, UK: Edward Elgar, 2006 in Script-Ed, Vol. 3, Issue 4, December 2006, http://www.law.ed.ac.uk/ahrc/script%2Ded/vol3-4/mo_review.asp.

Trade Magazine Articles

• “A law for free software: Don’t we have enough laws already?”, March 2005, The Free Software Magazine,  http://www.freesoftwaremagazine.com/free_issues/issue_02/free_software_act/.
  “The Free Software Act”, June 2004, Linux Journal, p. 96.
• “A Practical Legal Response to SCO: A Lex Lignux?”, March 2004, Linux World, http://www.linuxworld.com/story/44100.htm?DE=1.
• “Free Software Legal Protection: Licenses, Legislation or Both?”, December 2003, Linux Journal, http://www.linuxjournal.com/article.pho?sid=7293.
• “Why We Need a Free Software Act”, December 2003, Linux World, http://www.linuxworld.com/story/38078.htm.
• “We Need a FLOSS Law to Blow SCO v IBM Out of the Water” October 2003, World Watch, http://worldwatch.linuxgazette.com/article.php?sid=184.

Conference papers

• “Top-Down and Ground-Up Legal and Quasi-Legal Issues in Copyright Law”, conference paper given at workshop:- Before the Law: Language, Property, Community, Sovereignty at the International Institute for the Sociology of Law, Oñati, Basque Country, Spain, June 29, 2007.
• “A Theoretical Approach to IPRs”, Presentation based on critical approaches to IPRs, given at the Bioethical Implications of Globalisation workshop, Brussels, May 2006, funded by the European Commission.
• “An Intellectual Property Angle on Free Software Development”, First Free Software Conference (JAIIO), Universidad Argentina de la Empresa, Buenos Aires, Argentina, September 2003.
• “Property Rights in Land, Software and Genes”, Bioethical Implications of Globalization (B.I.G. Conference 2003), University of Lancaster, June 2003.

In Spanish:

• “Patentes, Propiedad y El Software Libre”, in the conference proceedings of the Second International Free Software Conference, Málaga, Spain, February 2006.  The conference proceedings were published by the Regional Government of Andalucía.
• “Teorias de Propiedad Intellectual”, in the conference proceedings of the Second International Free Software Conference, Mérida, Spain, October 2005.  The conference proceedings were published by the Regional Government of Extremadura.
• “Los Pinguinos, Las Comunidades, La GNU GPL y una Nueva Legislación para el Software Libre”, Linux Users Group Conference, Montevideo, Uruguay, November, 2003.
• “Licencias y Legislación para el Software Libre”, Fourth Hispalinux Conference, Universidad Rey Juan Carlos, Madrid, Spain, September 2003.

In Portuguese:

• “Leis Legais: Direitos Direitistas, Ambidestros e Esquerdistas do Software Livre”, CIBERCON – International Information Technology Law Conference, Salvador, Brazil, August 2004.
• “Ordem e Progresso: Licenças e Legislação do Software Livre”, Fifth International Forum on Free Software, Pontificate Catholic University of Rio Grande do Sul, Porto Alegre, Brazil, June 2004.

Conference Presentations and Talks

• “Free Software in Spain and Latin America: Good Governance, a Little Vision and a lot of Common Sense”, conference organised by the 21st Century Trust, Potsdam, Berlin, December 7, 2007.
• “Digitally Archiving Information: Some European and Australian Experiences”, workshop at the Oxford Internet Institute (OII), jointly organised by the Portuguese government and the OII, October 15, 2007.
• “The Democratic Deficit in Copyright Law: A Legislative Proposal”, lecture at the University of New South Wales, Australia, July 25, 2007.
• “Teaching Copyleft and Creative Commons in a Copyright-Riddled Academic World”, Annual Intellectual Property Teachers' Meeting, Aston University Birmingham, June 2007.
• “Creative Commons and Open Access in Education”, at Teaching and Learning Conference, NUI Galway, June 7, 2007.
• “Copyright versus copyleft: A high-tech tale of subversion?”, staff seminar, NUI Galway, November  1, 2006.

Lectures Overseas

• Two lectures, one entitled “Sources of Equality in Ireland, with especial reference to Travellers and Asylum Seekers”, and the other, “Sources of Rights: the Irish Constitution and the European Convention on Human Rights legislation”, to a postgraduate class in Public Administration, at the Institute of Social Development and Public Policy at Beijing Normal University, December 3, 2008.
• Two lectures at the C.U.N. in Bogotá, Colombia, to engineering students on the problems of the use of copyright and contract law to protect free software, November 17, 2007.
• Lecture on legal aspects of free culture, at the University of Extremadura’s (Spain) summer course, July 2006.
• Lecture on Lockean approaches on the topic of software patents, at the summer course of the University of Jaume I, Castellon (Spain), in July 2005.
• Lecture on legal aspects of free software at the University of Extremadura’s summer course, July 2004.

Interviews and features

• Podcast with First Monday: http://www.firstmondaypodcast.org/transcripts/transcript_may08.htm
• Interview on Senate TV in Brazil in August 2004, in Portuguese, about free software in Europe.
• Interview with Porto Alegre’s Municipal Government on implications of a state law which had been struck down for its unconstitutionality, June 2004.
• LinuxJournal featured my thesis: “Feature: Maureen O’Sullivan’s Thesis: Linux and the Commons”, October 2003, http://worldwatch.linuxgazette.com/article.php?sid=178.
• I was interviewed by Linux Gazette in Costa Rica, “Linux Buzz: WorldWatch Week in Review”, September 2003, http://www.linuxjournal.com/article.php?sid=7133.
  

 

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