Kimberlee Weatherall

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Kimberlee (Kim) Weatherall is a leading Australian Intellectual Property lawyer, blogger and academic. She studied at Oxford and Yale, then worked for Mallesons Stephen Jaques in Sydney before becoming a lecturer at the Melbourne Law School. She is also the Associate Director of the Intellectual Property Research Institute of Australia and board member of the Australian Digital Alliance. She is currently on sabbatical at the University of Queensland and will move there as a full time faculty member at the Law School in 2007. She was awarded the third annual Rusty Wrench award for service to the free software community at linux.conf.au 2007.

[edit] Blog

Her popular blog Weatherall's Law is one of the few covering IP issues in Australia in a manner accessible to non-lawyers. It contains detailed analyses of legal issues in Australia, including cases, legislation and legislative review. Started in mid-2002, the blog was particularly active in discussing the Australia-United States Free Trade Agreement IP Chapter.

On 10th January 2007 Weatherall announced she would cease posting to the blog.[1]

[edit] Submissions and Influence

Kim was the single-most quoted source in the Senate Standing Committee on Legal and Constitutional Affairs report on the required Exceptions for Technological Protection Measures. Her amicus curiae to the High Court in Sony vs. Stevens (which tested the anti-circumvention law in Australia) was quoted twice in the final decision. She is increasingly a contact point for media when Intellectual Property issues arise, leading to comparisons with other IP "rockstar academics" such as Lawrence Lessig or Canada's Michael Geist.