Seminar: Law for the Circular Economy

Streaming available!The seminar was success and now you can see the presentations online -> https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mfuUvDru0YM&feature=emb_title

Date and Venue: 9th December 2019, 10:00 - 16:30, University of Lapland (Yliopistonkatu 8, FIN-96101 ROVANIEMI, FINLAND), Lecture room 2

Description: The Law for the Circular Economy seminar will revolve around the role of law in the circular economy, with particular emphasis on two important steps of the product’s life cycle, namely regulating the supply-chain and regulating repairing and sharing activities. These topics will be explored from the perspective of both policy and law. The academic discourse will be complemented by real-life company cases, where focus will be posed especially on the fashion industry.

Please register by sending an email to Salokannel Veera Veera.Salokannel@ulapland.fi and Ballardini Rosa rosa.ballardini@ulapland.fi not later than Thursday 5^th December 2019.

The event will also be streamed: https://blogi.eoppimispalvelut.fi/ulapland/

Contact details:
Rosa Maria Ballardini, Associate Professor in IP law, rosa.ballardini@ulapland.fi
Jukka Similä, Professor in Natural resources law, jukka.similä@ulapland.fi

9.30 – 10.00 Registration and Coffee

10.00 - 10.10 Opening words
Prof. Jukka Similä and Associate Prof. Rosa Maria Ballardini

10.10 - 10.30 EU public policies related to fostering the circular and the sharing economies
Prof. Jukka Similä, University of Lapland
 

Session I: Regulating the supply chain – What’s the role of sustainability?

Chair: Post-doctoral researcher Juha Vesala, University of Lapland

10.30 - 10.50 Fashion Supply Chains and Circular Economy
Doctoral candidate Essi Karell, Aalto University

10.50 – 11.10 Recycling textiles needs systemic thinking
Senior Coordinator Hanna Salmenperä, SYKE

11.10 – 11.30 Regulating the supply chain in the fashion industry
Postdoctoral Researcher Jaakko Salminen, University of Turku

11.30 – 11.50 Perspectives on obsolescence in fashion design
Professor Ana Nuutinen, University of Lapland

12.00 – 13.00 Lunch break
 

Session II: Sharing, Repairing and Reusing

Chair: Prof. Jukka Similä, University of Lapland

13.00 - 13.30 Regulating Planned Obsolescence
Research Fellow Eléonore Maitre-Ekern, University of Oslo (on-line)

13.30 – 14.00 Property and Ownership Concepts: Are they fostering Sharebility?
Prof. Bram Akkermans, University of Maastricht

14.00– 14.20 From Words to Action - Steps towards Sustainability at Papu
Annariina Ruokamo, Sustainability advisor at Papu 

14.20 – 14.45 Coffee break

14.45 – 15.15 Repairing and Reusing IPR Protected Goods – Challenges and Opportunities
Associate Prof. Rosa Maria Ballardini, University of Lapland

15.15 – 15.30 Can Copyright Play a Role in Fashion’s Sustainability Problem?
Doctoral candidate Heidi Härkönen, University of Lapland

15.30 – 16.15 Panel discussion
Topic: Role of law in promoting sustainability in global fashion industry
Chair: Associate Prof. Rosa Maria Ballardini, University of Lapland and Prof. Jukka Similä, University of Lapland
Panelists:

• Bram Akkermans, Professor, University of Maastricht
• Rob van den Hoven van Genderen, Professor, University of Lapland
• Annariina Ruokamo, Papu and Lamkin
• Essi Karell, Aalto University
  

Bram Akkermans is associate professor of Private Law and Sustainability at Maastricht University, Faculty of Law. Bram Akkermans (1979) holds a law degree from the European Law School at Maastricht University (the Netherlands) (2002) and studied at Stellenbosch University (South Africa).  Since 2012 an invited fellow to the South African Research Chair on Property Law (SARPL.sun.ac.za). In 2017-2018 he held the special visiting chair (TPR-chair) in Sustainable Property Law at KU Leuven, Belgium. Bram worked as a co-editor and author on the Ius Commune Casebook Property Law (www.casebooks.eu), which was published in the summer of 2012. A second edition of this volume is in preparation. Moreover, he is associate director of the Maastricht University European Private Law Institute (MEPLI)'s and serves as editor to the European Property Law Journal. Bram is co-founder of the Young Property Lawyers Forum (YPLF), a global network of young property law scholars, as well as co-founder of the interdisciplinary ProSus (property and sustainability) research network. He regularly delivers papers on his research at national and international conferences. Since 2015 Bram Akkermans is Associate Professor of European Private law and he specialises in sustainable property law. His research focuses on property theory and constitutional property law investigating whether and how the rules of property law can be employed in a sustainable context.

Rosa Maria Ballardini is an Associate Professor at the University of Lapland, Faculty of Law. Since 2005 she has researched and thaught in the field of IP law at various univeristies. Rosa’s research interests focus on the interface between law (with focus on IP law) and technology. She also investigates issues related to IP law and sustainable development, including social innovation models. She has written extensively especially in the fields of patent and copyright law, open innovation and open source, as well as IP strategies and IP management in various technological contexts (e.g. software, 3D printing, Artificial Intelligence and industrial internet). Her research approach is multidisciplinary, combining law, technology, business and policy via using different types of methodologies (e.g. traditional legal research methods, empirical methods and design thinking in legal studies).

Heidi Härkönen (LL.M., trained on the bench) is a PhD Researcher at University of Lapland Faculty of Law. In her PhD dissertation, Härkönen is focusing on various copyright issues of fashion designs and investigating the balance between innovation and imitation in the world of fashion from a copyright perspective. She is also taking into account the issue of sustainability, which is the key challenge o today's fashion industry. Härkönen's most recent peer-reviewed article was awarded by the Finnish Bar Association as one of the best legal articles published in 2018. Härkönen is also the founder of the Finnish Fashion Law Association and acted as the president of the association from 2014 to 2017. The association received IPR Innovation award from IPR University Center in 2016.

Essi Karell is a doctoral candidate at Aalto University, School of Arts, Design and Architecture. Her research focuses on recyclability of clothing textiles, providing an investigation on possibilities and limitations of closed loop textile recycling from the perspective of design. During her doctoral studies Karell has worked in multiple projects linked to circular economy and textiles. She is also a member of Fashion/Textile Futures research group at Aalto University.

Eléonore Maitre-Ekern is a Research Fellow at the University of Oslo. Eléonore graduated in Law from the University of Geneva (2005) and holds a Master in European Law from the College of Europe (2007). After some work experience notably at the European Court of Justice in Luxembourg and at ClientEarth, an environmental lawyers’ organisation based in Brussels, she joined the University of Oslo in 2012. Eléonore wrote her PhD thesis at the Department of Public and International Law (University of Oslo) where she is currently employed as a researcher. The thesis is entitled ‘Towards a Circular Economy for Products: A legal analysis of Europe’s policy and regulatory framework from an ecological perspective’. Her latest publications include a co-edited book ‘Preventing Environmental Damage from Products’ (Cambridge University Press, 2018) and a journal article ‘Towards a Hierarchy of Consumption Behaviour in the Circular Economy’ (2019).

Ana Nuutinen is a Professor of Fashion and Clothing in the Faculty of Art and Design at the University of Lapland. She has a background in fashion design at the University of Art and Design Helsinki (now Aalto University) and in craft research at the University of Helsinki. Her research interests focus on the early stages of the product design process; concept design, explorative product development and design of pioneer products.

Annariina Ruokamo works as a sustainability advisor at Papu. She is a clothing designer (MA, University of Lapland) with the expertise of sustainable design strategies and sustainable issues of the fashion industry. With a five year experience in design and product management, she has a strong knowledge of the everyday challenges in the clothing companies from the sustainable point of view. Recently she started to work as a Research, Development and Innovation specialist in The Lahti Institute of Design and Fine Arts in several projects dealing with circular design and circular economy. She aims to spread the word of sustainable issues for the new generation designers by teaching sustainable design in The Lahti Institute of Design and Fine Arts.

Jaakko Salminen is a Postdoctoral Researcher at the Faculty of Law of the University of Turku, Finland. The central theme of his work is the role of law in enabling and regulating new forms of production. In particular, he looks at the role that mechanisms of governance through contract have played in the transition from centralized mass manufacturing to global value chains and the current fragmentation of value chains via digital platforms, and how these mechanisms have enabled the externalization of social, environmental, cultural and economic sustainability while allowing lead firms effective control over other aspects of production. He has lectured and published frequently on these topics and is affiliated with several international, multidisciplinary research groups such as the Institute for Global Law and Policy’s (Harvard Law School) Law and Economic Production Working Group and the Horizon2020 funded Sustainable Market Actors for Responsible Trade project.

Hanna Salmenperä (M.Sc, in Agriculture and Forestry, Environmental protection, University of Helsinki) has worked in SYKE for 20 years within waste issues. For past few years, Salmenperä has been concentrating on projects on circular economy, material efficiency, waste prevention and recycling of municipal solid wastes. She has participated in number of national and Nordic committees on wastes. Salmenperä started with waste advising services, informational policy instruments and evaluation of effects of advising. Currently, she studies the transition in waste management in Finland; the expected shift from moderate recycling culture to a society that meets the ambitious European recycling targets and principals of circular economy. She is a student in doctoral programme in interdisciplinary environmental sciences at Helsinki University.

Jukka Similä is Research Professor in Natural Resources Law at the University of Lapland. His research focused on environmental and natural resources law. From the standpoint of regulatory theory, he has explored diverse legal problems, such as defining criteria for the evaluation of environmental regulation; the ecological effectiveness of regulation, regulatory innovations; how regulation affects the technological development; what explains compliance with regulation; what empirical evidence tells about the functioning of the system of appeals; and how to develop law for ecosystem services. His research has covered many natural resource issues widely, including nature conservation law, forestry, minerals and water. His main ongoing project relates to adaptive water governance. Enhancing Adaptive Capacity for Sustainable Blue Growth (BlueAdapt) project is funded by the Strategic Research Council of Finnish Academy (https://blueadapt.fi/)

Rob van den Hoven van Genderen is Robert van den Hoven van Genderen is professor Artificial Intelligence and Robotlaw at the University of Lapland/Faculty of Law. In the Netherlands he is the director of the Center for Internet Law, Faculty of Law of the Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam and visiting professor of the National Taiwan University, the Kyushu University of Japan and Peking Law school of the PRC. He is also the chair of the Netherlands Association for AI and Robotlaw (NVAIR). Because of his pre-academic background as a regulatory director in the telecommunications industry he developed his academic interest in the areas of intrusive technology and the law, specifically AI and Robotlaw. His lecturing, as well as his research approach, is multidisciplinary because of the general effect of AI and Robotica on all levels of society and all disciplines, combining law, technology, social and cultural interests and economic policy. His publications on AI were mainly  concerning the possible need for legal capacity of Autonomous Artificial entities and robots. At the moment he concentrates on the legal consequences of the use of algorithms in profiling and policymaking and the legal requirements for transparency and fair use that should be applied.

Juha Vesala is a postdoctoral researcher at ULap/Faculty of Law. Juha’s research focuses on competition and intellectual property issues, particularly on how innovation and competition on markets can be secured and promoted through regulation. His recent research has examined these questions in relation to the exercise of intellectual property rights, online distribution of content, and applications of artificial intelligence. Currently, he is examining how sustainability could be incorporated into competition and intellectual property policy. This type of research relies significantly on comparative and economic approaches in addition to the conventional dogmatic legal research methods.