About the Moot Court
The Oxford International Intellectual Property Law Moot involves teams from law faculties around the world and is focused on a different topic of intellectual property law each year. Students will spend the fall semester authoring written submissions for the competition, improving their writing and research skills in English, conducting in-depth research on the specific intellectual property topic of the moot, and presenting their arguments in class in an on-campus oral round. Each university can submit only one team of 3 students, for consideration for the Oxford written competition, which then determines which teams can participate in the oral rounds at Oxford. Students apply for the team as individuals, not as preformed teams. The team of 3 University of Bern students will be chosen after the application deadline. Generally, Oxford will issue invitations to attend the oral rounds to the teams ranked in the top 24-28 of all written submissions worldwide, and if selected by Oxford, the University of Bern team will travel to the competition at Oxford University in March 2023. At Oxford, students will have the opportunity to compete against teams from around the world, being judged by distinguished practitioners and actual judges from the U.K.
Qualifications
Participating students must be enrolled at the University of Bern in the MLaw program for both Fall Semester 2023 and Spring Semester 2024. Students must not graduate from the MLaw program before the end of spring semester 2024 in order to be eligible to participate. The language of the briefs and oral arguments will be English, but of course, other languages are helpful for conducting research. Students should have taken or be taking one of Professor Rigamonti's courses on intellectual property law, in order to have some basic familiarity with the field.
Students will receive training on how to conduct intellectual property research using common law resources and databases, will improve their written and spoken legal English by drafting two written briefs and two sets of skeleton arguments, will learn courtroom protocol appropriate for the U.K., and will improve their advocacy and public speaking skills.
Important Dates
- Friday, September 22, 2023 at 5 p.m. Interested students must submit the required materials (discussed below). Students will be notified whether they have been selected for the team by Monday, September 25, 2023 at noon.
- Tuesday, September 26, 2023: 16:15 - 19:00, first class meeting
- September - November: Course meetings, Tuesday from 16:15 to 19:00, including research training, substantive IP law, and English legal writing training
- mid-November: Deadline for written submissions
- December 2023: The team's written submission will be turned in to Oxford for consideration.
- Mid-January 2024: Oxford will announce which teams made it through to the oral rounds
- February - March 2024: Spring course and preparation for the oral rounds (if admitted)
- March 2024: If invited by Oxford, the University of Bern team will travel to Oxford to compete
Signing Up
If interested, send an e-mail (in English) explaining your motivation, along with a CV in English and grades (Notenblatt) to iplaw@iwr.unibe.ch by noon on Friday, September 22, 2023 at 5 p.m.
