Bio
Giuseppina (Pina) D’Agostino is a CIGI senior fellow and a world-renowned authority on intellectual property (IP), innovation law and policy. She is an associate professor at Osgoode Hall Law School; vice-director of Connected Minds: Neural & Machine Systems for a Healthy Just Society ($318 million Canada First Research Excellence Fund grant); inaugural co-director of the Centre for Artificial Intelligence & Society at York University, founder and director of the IP Innovation Clinic and the IP Law and Technology Program at Osgoode Hall Law School; editor-in-chief of Intellectual Property Journal; and founding director of IP Osgoode.
Through CIGI and Intellectual Property Ontario, Pina has scaled the operational capacity of her IP Innovation Clinic model, to provide IP law training for law students working directly with lawyers to help clients via pro bono work. The goal is to promote innovation and entrepreneurship across Canada and the clinic has already achieved numerous start-up success stories and has undercut over $2 million in fees that would have otherwise been billable.
Prior to joining Osgoode, Pina was selected by the Recruitment of Policy Leaders Program for the Department of Canadian Heritage and worked at the Copyright Policy Branch; she also previously practised law at a large Toronto law firm. She is a Supreme Court of Canada–cited authority and is regularly called on by foreign governments and the federal and provincial Canadian governments for advice. In 2010, she testified before Parliament’s legislative committee on Canada’s ongoing copyright reform initiatives.
Pina has written on a range of IP issues in her many publications and in her three books: Copyright, Contract, Creators: New Media, New Rules (Edward Elgar Publishing, 2010); The Common Law of Intellectual Property: Essays in Honour of Professor David Vaver (co-edited with Catherine Ng and Lionel Bently; Hart Publishing, 2010); and Leading Legal Disruption: Artificial Intelligence and a Toolkit for Lawyers and the Law (Thomson Reuters, 2021). Pina completed her doctoral and master’s studies with distinction at the University of Oxford, where she was a lecturer in law and the recipient of various scholarships, including a Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council fellowship.
Pina holds the an Institute of Corporate Directors, Director designation from Rotman School of Management (University of Toronto), and currently serves on the Ontario Centre of Innovation’s board of directors and chairs its Governance and Nominating Committee. Pina is also on the board of directors of Alectra Inc., where she chairs the GRE&T Centre Advisory Committee advancing sustainable energy solutions.