Dr Martin Husovec

Dr Martin Husovec

Associate Professor of Law

LSE Law School

Room No
Cheng Kin Ku Building 7.17
Connect with me

Languages
English, German, Slovakian
Key Expertise
intellectual property law, innovation, digital rights, free speech

About me

Dr Martin Husovec [pronounced as Husovets, or Husoveck] is an Associate Professor of Law at The London School of Economics and Political Science (LSE). Martin investigates questions of innovation policy and digital liberties, in particular, regulation of online digital platforms, intellectual property, and freedom of expression.

Martin is one of the leading experts and educators on the EU Digital Services Act. He is the author of the monograph, Principles of the Digital Services Act (Oxford University Press, 2024) and designer of popular courses, such as the LSE Specialist Course on the EU Digital Services Act, and online courses on the Digital Services Act, such as the DSA Mini Course and DSA Specialist Masterclass. Martin is also one of the rapporteurs of the Council of Europe’s Committee of Experts on online safety and empowerment of content creators and users. Over the years, Martin acted as a lawyer for numerous NGOs before the European Court of Human Rights (ECtHR) and the Court of Justice of the European Union (CJEU) in digital-technology-related cases (see the overview of cases here). Martin’s work was repeatedly cited by Advocate Generals at the Court of Justice of the European Union.

Martin obtained his Ph.D. from the Max Planck Institute for Innovation and Competition, and Ludwig Maximilian University in Munich for his work on injunctions against intermediaries (published with Cambridge University Press, 2017). He is a member of the European Copyright Society (ECS), a group of prominent European copyright scholars. He is also a co-founder of a think-tank, the European Information Society Institute, which is active as an intervener before the European Court of Human Rights, and the Court of Justice of the European Union, and operates a domain name dispute resolution system for skTLD.

Martin was an advisor to the President of the Slovak Constitutional Court, national ministries in Europe and Asia, and various EU institutions in the areas of intellectual property, digital services regulation, freedom of expression, and privacy. 

Administrative support: Law.Reception@lse.ac.uk

Research interests

Martin conducts research in the areas of intellectual property, digital rights and EU law, in particular:

(i) accountability and liability of online intermediaries,

(ii) remedies in copyright and patent law,

(iii) state regulation of innovation,

(iv) various problems of the data economy

(v) digital freedom of expression. 

Teaching

Books

Principles of the Digital Services Act (OUP 2024)

 Numerous questions were at the heart of parliamentary discussions over the provisions of the Digital Services Act (DSA), the EU’s new regulatory framework for digital services. How should liberal democracies prevent illegal and harmful activities online and protect fundamental rights? How should digital service providers assess the impact of their technology on others? And how should technology companies moderate user-generated content? Principles of the Digital Services Act analyses the DSA’s key provisions, dissecting its mechanisms and components, to understand the new law’s likely impact on digital services in Europe and beyond.

The book puts the new legal framework into its political, economic, and social contexts by explaining its grounding within the frameworks of economic regulation and human rights. It examines the European legislature’s approach to the DSA, offering a detailed historical account of the legislative and pre-legislative process. The book argues that the envisaged regulatory system has the potential to boost trust in the digital environment. However, its mechanisms must be able to rely on the robust network of civil society organisations and the regulators should follow a set of principles. In this way, the DSA’s goal can be achieved through means that are firmly aligned with respect for individual liberties, including the freedom of expression.

Combining academic research with practical insights, Principles of the Digital Services Act offers a robust analysis into how to apply and further develop the most important tools of the DSA to rebuild trust in the digital environment.

click here for publisher's site

 


 

Injunctions in Patent Law: Trans-Atlantic Dialogues on Flexibility and Tailoring (Cambridge University Press, 2022) edited by Martin Husovec and Jorge L. Contreras

Patents are important tools for innovation policy. They incentivize the creation and dissemination of new technical solutions and help to disclose their working to the public in exchange for limited exclusivity. Injunctions are important tools of their enforcement. Much has been written about different aspects of the patent system, but the issue of injunctions is largely neglected in the comparative legal literature. This book explains how the drafting, tailoring and enforcement of injunctions in patent law works in several leading jurisdictions: Europe, the United States, Canada, and Israel. The chapters provide in-depth explanation of how and why national judges provide for or reject flexibility and tailoring of injunctive relief. With its transatlantic and intra- European comparisons, as well as a policy and theoretical synthesis, this is the most comprehensive overview available for practicing attorneys and scholars in patent law. 

click here for publisher's site


 

Injunctions against Intermediaries in the European Union: Accountable but Not Liable? (CUP 2017)

In the European Union, courts have been expanding the enforcement of intellectual property rights by employing injunctions to compel intermediaries to provide assistance, despite no allegation of wrongdoing against these parties. These prospective injunctions, designed to prevent future harm, thus hold parties accountable where no liability exists. Effectively a new type of regulatory tool, these injunctions are distinct from the conventional secondary liability in tort. At present, they can be observed in orders to compel website blocking, content filtering, or disconnection, but going forward, their use is potentially unlimited. This book outlines the paradigmatic shift this entails for the future of the Internet and analyzes the associated legal and economic opportunities and problems.

click here for publisher's site


 

Liability on the Internet under Czech and Slovak law [Zodpovednosť na internete podľa českého a slovenského práva] (CZ.NIC, 2014) 

click here for publisher's site

Articles

  • Martin Husovec, Tatjana Grote, Yara Mazhar, Cham Mikhaeil, Harold Miñarro Escalona, Pragya Sinha Kumar, Sanjana Sreenath 'Grand Confusion After Sanchez v. France: Seven Reasons for Concern about Strasbourg Jurisprudence on Intermediaries' LSE Legal Studies Working Paper 8/2024
  • Martin Husovec, Tatjana Grote, Yara Mazhar, Cham Mikhaeil, Harold Miñarro Escalona, Pragya Sinha Kumar and Sanjana Sreenath, 'Grand Confusion After Sanchez v. France: Seven Reasons for Concern about Strasbourg Jurisprudence on Intermediaries' in Maastricht Journal of European and Comparative law 4 (2024) (forthcoming)
  • 'The Digital Service Act’s red line: What the Commission can and cannot do about disinformation' Journal of Media Law (forthcoming)
  • 'The DSA as a creator's charter?' (2023) Journal of Intellectual Property Law and Practice 18 (2) 71-73
  • 'Rising Above Liability: The Digital Services Act as a Blueprint for the Second Generation of Global Internet Rules' (October 10, 2023) Berkeley Technology Law Journal Vol. 38, No. 3 Available at SSRN
  • 'A Human Right to Ever-Stronger Protection?' International Review of Intellectual Property and Competition (2023)
  • 'Mandatory filtering does not always violate freedom of expression: important lessons from Poland v council and European parliament (C-401/19)' Common Market Law Review, 60 (1) 173-198
  • ‘Using experimental evidence to improve delegated enforcement’ (2022) International Review of Law and Economics 71 (with Lenka Fiala)
  • ’Sui Generis Database Protection 2.0: Judicial and Legislative Reforms’ (November 16, 2021); forthcoming in European Intellectual Property Review (with Estelle Derclaye)
  • 'European Copyright Society - comment on copyright and the Digital Services Act proposal'IIC International Review of Intellectual Property and Competition Law (2022) 53 (3) 358-376 (with Alexander Peukert, Martin Kretschmer, Péter Mezei  and João Pedro Quintais)
  • Jorge Contreras and Martin Husovec, 'Issuing and Tailoring Patent Injunctions – a Cross-Jurisdictional Comparison and Synthesis' in Contreras and Husovec (eds.) Injunctions in Patent Law: A Trans-Atlantic Dialogue on Flexibility and Tailoring (Cambridge University Press 2021) forthcoming
  • Martin Husovec and João Quintais, 'Too Small to Matter? On the Copyright Directive’s bias in favour of big right-holders' in Tuomas Mylly and Jonathan Griffiths (Eds.) Global Intellectual Property Protection and New Constitutionalism. Hedging Exclusive Rights (Oxford University Press, 2021)
  • Martin Husovec and João Pedro Quintais, ‘How to license Article 17? Exploring the Implementation Options for the New EU Rules on Content-Sharing Platforms’ (2021) 4 GRUR International 
  • 'How will the European patent judges understand proportionality?' 60 (4) (2020) Jurimetrics 5
  • 'Spill-Overs in Data Governance: The Relationship Between the GDPR’s Right to Data Portability and EU Sector-Specific Data Access Regimes' (2019) Journal of European Consumer and Market Law (with Inge Graef and Jasper den Boom)
  • 'How Europe Wants to Redefine Global Online Copyright Enforcement' In: Tatiana Eleni Synodinou (ed.), Pluralism or Universalism in International Copyright Law (Kluwer law, 2019) forthcoming
  • 'Closing the Gap: How EU Law Constrains National Rules Against Imitation?' in Brunn, Dinwoodie, Ohly, Levin (eds.) Transition and Coherence in Intellectual Property Law (Oxford University Press 2019)
  • 'The Fundamental Right to Property and the Protection of Investment: How Difficult Is It to Repeal New Intellectual Property Rights' in Christophe Geiger (eds), Research Handbook on Intellectual Property and Investment Law (Edward Elgar 2019)
  • 'Remedies First, Liability Second: Or Why We Fail to Agree on Optimal Design of Intermediary Liability?' In Giancarlo Frosio (eds.), The Oxford Handbook of Intermediary Liability Online (Oxford University Press 2019) in press
  • 'Intermediary Accountability and Responsibility' in Giancarlo Frosio (eds.), The Oxford Handbook of Intermediary Liability Online (Oxford University Press 2019) in press (with Giancarlo Frosio)
  • 'Asking Innocent Third Parties for a Remedy: Origins and Trends' In Franz Hofmann and Franziska Kurz (eds.) Law of Remedies (Intersencia 2019) 
  • 'A Story of the Data Retention in Slovakia: Constitutional Review and its Consequences' in Marek Zubik (eds) European Constitutional Courts Towards Data Retention Law (Springer 2019) in press (with Matej Gera) 
  • ‘Standardization, Open Source, and Innovation: Sketching the Effect of IPR Policies’ In Jorge Contreras (eds.) Cambridge Handbook of Technical Standardization Law (Cambridge University Press 2019) in press
  • 'Essence of Intellectual Property Rights under Art 17(2) of the EU Charter' (2019) 20(6) German Law Journal (special edition on 'Essence of Fundamental Rights'), pp. 840-863
  • 'Towards a Holistic Regulatory Approach for the European Data Economy: Why the Illusive Notion of Non-Personal Data is Counterproductive to Data Innovation' (2019) European Law Review, forthcoming (with Inge Graef and Raphael Gellert)
  • 'The Promises of Algorithmic Copyright Enforcement: Takedown or Staydown? Which is Superior? And Why?' (2018) 42(1) Columbia Journal of Law & the Arts, pp. 53-84
  • 'Data Portability and Data Control: Lessons for an Emerging Concept in EU Law' (2018) 19(6) German Law Journal, pp. 1359-1398 (with Inge Graef and Nadya Purtova)
  • 'Courts, privacy and data protection in Slovakia: A hesitant guardian?' In Maja Brkan (ed.) Courts, privacy and data protection (Edward Elgar Publishing, 2017)
  • 'Website Blocking, Injunctions and Beyond: View on the Harmonization from the Netherlands' (2017) GRUR International (Gewerblicher Rechtsschutz und Urheberrecht, Internationaler Teil 7/2017, pp. 580-589 (with Lisa Van Dongen)
  • 'Holey cap! CJEU drills (yet) another hole in the e-Commerce Directive’s safe harbours' (2017) 12 (2) Journal of Intellectual Property Law & Practice, pp. 115-125
  • 'An academic perspective on the copyright reform' (2016) 33(1) Computer Law & Security Review, pp. 3-13 (with Sophie Stalla-Bourdillona, Eleonora Rosati, Karmen Turk, Christina Angelopoulos, Aleksandra Kuczerawy, Miquel Peguera)
  • 'Intellectual Property Rights and Integration by Conflict: The Past, Present and Future' (2016) 18 Cambridge Yearbook of European Legal Studies, pp. 239–269
  • 'Doctrine of Trademark Use in European Union and Japan' (2017) 21 Marquete Intellectual Property Law Review, pp. 1-30
  • 'General monitoring of third-party content: compatible with freedom of expression?' (2016) 11(1) Journal of Intellectual Property Law and Practice, pp. 17-20
  • 'Slovakia ∙ Slovak Constitutional Court Annuls National Data Retention Provisions' (2015) 3 European Data Protection Review, pp. 227-229
  • 'Much Ado about Little – Privately Litigated Internet Disconnection Injunctions' (2015) 2 International Review of Intellectual Property and Competition Law (IIC), pp. 10-37 (with Miquel Peguera)
  • 'The End of Meta Search Engines in Europe?' (2014) 14(1) Chicago-Kent Journal of Intellectual Property, pp. 145-172
  • 'CJEU Allowed Website Blocking Injunctions With Some Reservations' (2014) 9(7) Journal of Intellectual Property Law and Practice, pp. 631-634
  • Case Comment on Pinckney (2014) 46(2) The International Review of Intellectual Property and Competition Law (IIC), pp. 370-374
  • 'ECHR Rules on Liability of ISPs as a Restriction of Freedom of Speech' (2014) 9(2) Journal of Intellectual Property Law and Practice, pp. 109-110
  • Slovak Chapter. Vanhees, H. (ed.) International Encyclopaedia of Laws: Intellectual Property (Kluwer Law International 2014) (with Zuzana Adamova)
  • 'Injunctions against innocent third parties: case of website blocking' (2013) 4(2) Journal of Intellectual Property, Information Technology and E-Commerce Law (JIPITEC), pp. 116-129
  • 'Domain name transfer before Slovak and Czech courts' (2012) 3(2) Journal of Intellectual Property, Information Technology and E-Commerce Law (JIPITEC), pp. 148-152

Reports