MARCELO THOMPSON Mello Guimarães is a Research Assistant Professor at the Faculty of Law of the University of Hong Kong. His research focuses on Information Technology Law and Legal Theory and, from September 2009 on, he will be teaching ”Regulation of Cyberspace” for graduate and undergraduate students.
In Oxford, Marcelo is finishing a Doctorate of Philosophy (DPhil) in ‘Information, Communication and the Social Sciences‘ at Kellogg College and the Oxford Internet Institute. During the past years, Marcelo has been in receipt of a full doctorate scholarship from The CAPES Foundation, of the Brazilian Ministry of Education, for which he was ranked 1st place, nationally, in the area of Law.
Marcelo’s supervisor in his DPhil is Dr Victoria Nash.
Thesis Topic
Marcelo’s DPhil thesis focuses on the application of the principle of neutrality in law and politics related to the Internet. He is interested, for instance, in the ongoing discussions about network neutrality, neutrality of mechanisms of cultural and political filtering (think of Google and the Wikipedia), and more established principles of technological neutrality that apply in areas such as the regulation of authentication and identification technologies and intellectual property law.
Marcelo’s thesis is called: ”Evaluating Neutrality in the Information Age: On the Value of Persons an Access”. In it, the principle of technological neutrality and its variants are looked into in the context of theories of neutrality in political theory and legal philosophy. The thesis argues for a liberal perfectionist stance, in which law and politics account for the most typical and fundamental values of the information age — the recognition of human personhood in the information environment and the enablement of access to information and knowledge — within a broad political framework that cherishes the value of personal autonomy.
Career
Marcelo is a former Attorney General of the Brazilian Information Technology Institute – ITI, under the Office of the President of Brazil (2004-2005), where he headed the legal team in charge of both the Brazilian Free Software Programme and the Brazilian Public Key Infrastructure.
Prior to that, Marcelo was the Head of the Department of Litigation (2003-2004) and an Attorney within the Venture Capital division (2002-2003) of the Brazilian Innovation Agency – FINEP, under theBrazilian Ministry of Science and Technology. He was also a Part-Time Information Technology Law Professor at the Pontifical Catholic University of Rio de Janeiro (2002-2003), from where he holds a Bachelor of Laws degree (2000) and a Postgraduate Diploma in Intellectual Property Law (2002-2003). Marcelo also holds a Master of Laws with Concentration in Law and Technology from the University of Ottawa’s Law & Technology Program (2005-2006), where he focused his dissertation on the interplay between copyright and human rights – or, more precisely, on the right of access to knowledge as a human right. His research supervisor in Ottawa was Prof Elizabeth Judge, and his examiner was Prof Michael Geist.
From May to June 2008 Marcelo was the Alcatel-Lucent Foundation Visiting Fellow at the Hans Bredow Institute for Media Research, University of Hamburg (on the trails of his friend and colleague Malte Ziewitz).
Marcelo started his professional carrer in 1998, practicing as a law clerk (1998-2000) and later as a lawyer (2001) with Prof Gilberto Martins de Almeida, from PUC-Rio.
Selected Publications
[Journal Articles]
Identity, Capacity and Totality: Rethinking the Boundaries of Personhood in Brazil (2009) 3 poliTICs 25 [in Portuguese].
Property Enforcement or Retrogressive Measure? Copyright Reform in Canada and the Human Right of Access to Knowledge (2007) University of Ottawa Law & Technology Journal [forthcoming].
The Democracy of FLOSS: Software Procurement Under the Democratic Principle (2007) University of Ottawa Law & Technology Journal [forthcoming].
Taxation of Information Technology Services (2003) 1 Tax Magazine of the City of Rio de Janeiro [in Portuguese].
[Chapters]
with Sergio Vieira Branco Jr. Forewords to Joaquim Falcão, Ronaldo Lemos, and Tercio Sampaio Ferraz Junior “Free Software Law and Public Administration” (Rio de Janeiro: Lumen Juris, 2007) [in Portuguese: “Direito do Software Livre e a Administração Pública”].
[Projects]
Rundle, M., Blakley, B., Broberg, J., Nadalin, T., Olds, D., Ruddy, M., Thompson Mello Guimaraes, M. and Trevithick, P. (2007) At a Crossroads: Personhood and Digital Identity in the Information Society. OECD, Directorate for Science, Technology and Industry, Working Paper DSTI/DOC(2007)7.
”The Northern European Subset: A Cross-Border Platform for Electronic Public Procurement” (2008) 4 Public Procurement Law Review 175 [Westlaw]
[Newsletters and Non-Academic Journals]
Brazilian Ventures and Intellectual Property (2002) WIPO – World Intellectual Property Organization’s Newsletter for Small and Medium Enterprises.
Technology, Democracy, and Freedom in Reciprocity (2003) Digital – Brazilian Information Technology Institute’s Magazine [in Portuguese].
[Conference Proceedings]
Venture Capital and the Financing of Technology-Based Enterprises (2003) Documents from the WIPO/ECLAC-UN Regional Experts Meeting on National Innovation Systems: Intellectual Property, University, and Enterprise [translated to Spanish].
Lectures and Seminars
Places of prior lectures and seminars include: the Pontifical Catholic University of Rio de Janeiro, the Pontifical Catholic University of Rio Grande do Sul, the University of Ottawa, the University of Oxford (Oxford Intellectual Property Research Center, Human Rights Discussion Group, and Oxford Internet Institute) the National University of Ireland, Galway, Durham University (at the Society of Legal Scholars Anual Conference), the University of Hamburg, the Brazilian Superior Court of Justice, the Internet Governance Forum, the UN Economic Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean (in partnership with the World Intellectual Property Organization), the Brazilian Chamber of Deputies, the Brazilian Innovation Agency, the Brazilian Patents and Trademarks Office, the Brazilian IT and Telecom Law Association / IPEJUR LLM Program, and other conferences and workshops.