Professor Jessica Lai

Professor Jessica Lai specialises in intellectual property, especially patent law, the protection of Mātauranga Māori, and patents and gender. Jessica is the author of Indigenous Cultural Heritage and Intellectual Property Rights (Springer, 2014) and Patent Law and Women (Routledge, 2021). She is also an author of the Annotated High Court Rules (5th edn, LexisNexis, 2025), as well as numerous articles and chapters, and the editor of multiple books. Her latest edited collection is A Research Agenda for Intellectual Property Law and Gender (Edward Elgar, 2024, with Kathy Bowrey).

Jessica was named a Rutherford Discovery Fellow by the New Zealand Royal Society Te Apārangi in 2021. She has also been a PI on a Marsden Fund Standard Grant (2019-2022) and was a Swiss National Science Foundation Postdoctoral Fellow (2015-2016), which she undertook at the Max-Planck Institute for Innovation and Competition in Munich.

Between 2010 and 2012, Jessica worked as a Research Fellow at the University of Lucerne, Switzerland, where she completed her doctorate (summa cum laude). She stayed on at the University of Lucerne as a postdoctoral researcher until July 2016. Before moving to Switzerland, she studied law and chemistry at Victoria University of Wellington, where she obtained an LLB Hons (First Class), MSc (First Class) and BSc. During her studies at the University, she was granted various awards, including a prestigious New Zealand Vice-Chancellor’s Committee William Georgetti Scholarship.

Jessica joined the School of Accounting and Commercial Law in August 2016, and was Head of School from July 2021 to June 2022. She stepped down as Head of School to take up her Rutherford Discovery Fellowship.

She has taught Intellectual Property and Business Innovation, Patent Law, Patent Interpretation, Marketing Law (trade mark law, consumer and competition law, advertising standards), and Legal Environment of Business (contract law, tort law, property law). Jessica has taught at multiple institutes, including the University of Geneva and University of Lucerne, Switzerland, Stockholm University, Sweden, and Goethe University Frankfurt, Germany.