Dr Yahong Li, JSD & JSM (Stanford), JD (Suffolk), PDip (Peking), LLB (SW U Pol. & Law), is an Associate Professor at the Faculty of Law and was an Associate Director at HKU Technology Transfer Office.
Dr. Li specializes in intellectual property (IP) law with a focus on cross-disciplinary study on IP and cutting-edge technologies. Since 2003, she has been exploring the relationship between IP and innovation by studying patent activities and performances in the fields of biotech, pharmaceutical and information technologies. She was awarded a Hong Kong government General Research Fund (GRF) to do research on biotech patenting in China, was a member of HKU theme-based research projects: “Drug Discovery/Synthesis” and “Ethical and Legal Issue for Genomics, Proteomics and Bioinformatics”, and was awarded several university grants to conduct research on WTO-related IP issues and competition issue. In 2013 and 2014 she was invited by Harvard Berkman Center for Internet & Society to join a small working group on Innovation and Law. Her recent research interests have been on the issues of IP boundaries, copyright and creativity, and copyright law reform. She has been a Hong Kong Coordinator for the copyright law reform project of China State Copyright Bureau. In June 2014, she was awarded a major GRF to conduct research on fair use and creativity across the US, the EU, Hong Kong and Mainland China.
Research areas: Copyright and AIGC, UGC and other user creativity and rights; Patent law and innovation in IT (software and AI) and life sciences; Technology transfer, IP commercialization and IP trading; IP law and policy from international and comparative perspectives; Cross-border IP protection and coordination in Guangdong-Hong Kong-Macau Great Bay Area