UCL Laws PhD candidate Fidelice Opany awarded the IBIL Research Scholarship for 2024

The UCL Institute of Brand and Innovation Law (IBIL) is delighted to welcome new PhD candidate, Fidelice Opany, to the UCL Laws PhD programme. Fidelice is the recipient of the IBIL Research Scholarship for 2024. This scholarship is open to all UCL PhD applicants in the field of intellectual property law and is awarded on the basis of academic merit. Made possible thanks to the generosity of IBIL’s sponsors and supporters, the scholarship covers all university fees and provides an annual stipend for a period of three years.

Fidelice’s research interest lies in patent law, trade secrets law, technical standards, emerging technologies and the interface of antitrust/competition and intellectual property. Her PhD research, which is supervised by Professor Matt Fisher and Dr Alina Trapova, investigates how artificial intelligence (AI) traits, such as those related to explainability and reproducibility, impact sufficiency of disclosure—an international patent law requirement that stipulates that inventions be disclosed in a clear and concise manner to enable people with skills in the art to practice the technology. Fidelice’s research examines how AI-related inventions, i.e., inventions for which AI makes technical contributions or constitutes the core invention, should be disclosed to satisfy the sufficiency of disclosure requirement.

Commenting on her award, Fidelice said:

“I am immensely honoured to be the recipient of the IBIL PhD Scholarship for 2024. Without this award, I would not have been able to pursue my doctoral research. It will allow me to benefit from the supervision of, and working alongside, highly respected and impactful academics, and contribute to a fast-evolving area of patent law. I am grateful to IBIL and its sponsors for their generous support.”

Prior to joining the PhD programme at UCL, Fidelice was a Tutorial Fellow at Maseno University, School of Law (Kenya) where she taught Law of Equity and Trusts, participated in and administered several research projects, and trained students for moot court competitions. Fidelice also worked as an Intellectual Property Policy Researcher at 4iP Council (Munich, Germany), where she undertook extensive research relating to cellular standards, licensing of standard essential patents and competition aspects of standardisation. Furthermore, Fidelice was an Academic Tutor at the Munich Intellectual Property Law Centre where she supported and prepared students for the Intellectual Property and Indigenous Heritage unit.

Previously, she practiced law before the Kenyan Bar and advised and represented clients on issues related to commercial, administrative, constitutional, and intellectual property laws. Fidelice received her Master’s in Intellectual Property and Competition Law from the University of Augsburg (Munich, Germany), with the support of a fully funded scholarship from the German Academic Exchange Programme. She holds a Postgraduate Diploma in Law from the Kenya School of Law, and a Bachelor of Laws from the University of Nairobi (Kenya). During 2023/24, Fidelice was also a Thomas Edison Innovation Law & Policy Fellow at the Center for Intellectual Property x Innovation Policy, George Mason University (Virginia, USA). In this capacity, she researched the Internet of Things and alternative collective licensing schemes for standard essential patents in the USA.