Prof. P.B. Hugenholtz

Bernt Hugenholtz is Professor Emeritus of Intellectual Property Law at the University of Amsterdam, and Of Counsel at Brinkhof Advocaten, Amsterdam. He is also a deputy judge in intellectual property cases at the Court of Appeal of The Hague.

Prof. Hugenholtz is former Director of the Institute for Information Law (IViR). Until 2024 he was Professor II at the University of Bergen (Norway), and he still teaches regularly at the Munich IP Law Centre, Bocconi University (Milan), Charles University (Prague), and the universities of Amsterdam and Bergen.

Prof. Hugenholtz is a world-leading expert in the field of international and EU copyright law, and a regularly invited speaker at international conferences. He is a founder of the Wittem Group that drafted the European Copyright Code, and a founder of the European Copyright Society.

In 1989 he received his doctorate cum laude from the University of Amsterdam for his dissertation on the legal protection of databases (‘Auteursrecht op informatie’). He is co-author with Professor Paul Goldstein (Stanford University), of  International Copyright. Principles, Law, and Practice, and co-author with Professor Thomas Dreier (TU Karlsruhe), of Concise European Copyright Law . He has acted as a consultant to the World Intellectual Property Organisation (WIPO), the OECD, the European Presidency, the European Commission, the European Parliament, the government of the Netherlands and other national governments, and has produced studies for the European Commission, the European Parliament, WIPO, UNESCO and various Dutch government agencies. Until 2024 he was the General Editor of the Information Law Series, published by Kluwer Law International.