(June 18, 2019)

Queen’s Law’s Conflict Analytics Lab (Canada) and EDHEC Business School’s LegalEDHEC research centre (France) have just signed a partnership for a project that will place artificial intelligence at the heart of decision-making in the field of intellectual property law. 

In addition to their researchers, Queen’s Law and EDHEC Business School will involve their students in executing the project via the analysis of jurisprudence and the determination of the criteria used by judges to assess the risk of confusion associated with legal action concerning brand counterfeiting.

This “Trademark Similarity Assessment” project will involve developing a system based on deep learning – analysis of text and images – in order to make it easier to detect the risk of confusion in brand counterfeiting cases.

The tool will seek to fulfil three objectives:

  • Use machine learning to identify the visual and textual characteristics specific to each brand.
  • Assess the risk of similarity between brands.
  • Enable lawyers and judges to uniformly assess the risk of confusion between brands.

For Samuel Dahan, Professor at Queen’s Law and Director of the Conflict Analytics Lab, “this transatlantic project offers an incredible opportunity to improve comparison tools in the trademark law field. The major progress made with image processing, particularly thanks to Facebook’s Detectron technology, allows thousands of brands to be compared in just a few seconds.”

Christophe Roquilly, Professor at EDHEC and Director of the LegalEDHEC research centre, hails the project. “The project is fully consistent with the development of our ‘Advanced Law, Lawyers and Lawyering’ strategic research work within LegalEdhec. It focuses on two major objectives: determine how digital technology and AI are now transforming law, legal practice and the competencies expected of in-house legal counsels, and analyse how law needs to respond to the risks and opportunities inherent to the ongoing transformation of the economy by digital and AI.

“This tool could have a sizeable impact on judicial decision-making and especially improve the significant problems of coherency that currently exist between the systems in Europe, the USA and Canada.”

About LegalEDHEC

Created in 2009, LegalEDHEC produces and disseminates research of practical use for legal professionals and decision makers. The research centre has amassed expertise in the fields of legal risk management, legal performance, compliance, ethics and the digital economy. Between 2015 and 2019, LegalEDHEC issued 24 publications and was mentioned in over 110 press articles.

About EDHEC Business School

Founded in 1906, EDHEC is now one of Europe’s top 15 business schools. Based in Lille, Nice, Paris, London and Singapore, and counting over 90 nationalities on its campuses, EDHEC is a fully international school directly connected to the business world. With over 40,000 graduates in 120 countries, it trains committed managers capable of dealing with the challenges of a fast-evolving world. Harnessing its core values of excellence, innovation and entrepreneurial spirit, EDHEC has developed a strategic model founded on research of true practical use to society, businesses and students, and which is particularly evident in the work of EDHEC-Risk Institute and Scientific Beta. The School functions as a genuine laboratory of ideas and plays a pioneering role in the field of digital education via EDHEC Online, the first fully online degree-level training platform. These various components make EDHEC a centre of knowledge, experience and diversity, geared to preparing new generations of managers to excel in a world subject to transformational change.

EDHEC in figures: 8,600 students in academic education, 19 degree programs ranging from bachelor to PhD level, 184 professors and researchers, 11 specialist research centres.   

About Conflict Analytics

The Conflict Analytics Lab is a research-based consortium on the application of artificial intelligence and data analytics to conflict resolution and negotiation based at Queen’s Law and the Smith School of Business. “Conflict analytics” is the process of extracting actionable knowledge from negotiation, mediation and settlement agreements. It comprises a global network of experts drawn from across industry and academia (including Queen’s in Canada, Columbia Business Analytics in the United States, HEC Paris in France and Di Tella in Argentina).

About Queen’s Law

With an international reputation in the theory and practice of law, Queen’s Faculty of Law offers unique experiential and global opportunities in an environment that prizes collegiality, innovation and access to justice. The Faculty distinguishes itself through its innovative programs, excellence in teaching, and research. Located in Kingston, Ontario, Canada, Queen’s Law accompanies its JD program with national and international educational programs through its Certificate in Law and Graduate Diploma in Legal Services Management, with an international Graduate Diploma in Immigration and Citizenship Law launching in 2021.