Louise Buckingham

Louise Buckingham is a senior lawyer and heads the knowledge and innovation function within G+T’s award-winning Tech+ IP group.

She has in-depth practical experience across all areas of intellectual property, including trade marks, designs, copyright, patents and plant breeders’ rights (US plant patents), and has worked in a wide range of settings including full service leading law firms and the not-for-profit/charities sectors in Australia and the UK, and in-house in the US. She also has deep academic expertise in intellectual property, particularly IP commercialisation and human rights/cultural heritage issues. She is an effective communicator and has expertise providing strategic advice to clients and in IP management and process improvement.

As well as playing a crucial role in complex matters and law-shaping cases and appeals e.g. Calidad, Aristocrat, Self Care, Louise is involved with the firm’s approaches to mission critical issues at the intersection of law and technology, such as policies around generative-AI, and awareness-raising about Indigenous Cultural and Intellectual Property (ICIP). At G+T she is responsible for training and mentoring within G+T’s Indigenous Cadets program, and a member of the G+T Reconciliation Action Plan action team.

Louise teaches IP, cultural heritage and ‘art law’ subjects in a number of leading Australian universities. She is a committee member (NSW) of IPSANZ and is a participant member of Australasian Intellectual Property Academics, and IP Teachers conferences. Louise has developed and delivered a range of legal and law-related training modules and seminars and researched and written about IP and related rights in a variety of contexts.

Prior to joining G+T, Louise was the Senior Legal Manager, Intellectual Property, and a member of the senior management team overseeing rebranding at global berry company, Driscoll's, headquarters, and a faculty member of the Department of Justice Studies at the State University of California, San Jose, based in northern California. She was also a volunteer mediator for the Department of Police Accountability, San Francisco, a board director of Pajaro Valley Loaves and Fishes, and a visiting researcher at Stanford’s Center for Archaeology. Before moving to California, Louise was the Senior Lawyer at the Australian Copyright Council, editor of the Copyright Reporter and a speaker/trainer for Copyright Agency.

Louise has a Doctorate of Philosophy (University of NSW Faculty of Law and Justice PhD Excellence Award for candidates of distinction whose examiners recommended the conferral of a degree without any amendment, and an Australian Postgraduate Award (APA) recipient); a Master of Sciences (comparative politics/international relations) with merit from the London School of Economics, supported by a University of Sydney travelling scholarship; a Master of Laws; and, joint Bachelors, Hons, degrees in Law and Arts (First Class Honours, Ancient History) from the University of Sydney, where she was the University of Sydney Union President, pre-voluntary student unionism, an editor of Honi Soit, and a women’s officer of the Students Representative Council. She has certificates from Berkeley extension (mediation), and from Stanford’s “Understanding Intellectual Property in the US” program.

She was admitted to practise in NSW in 2000 (and in England and Wales in 2005).