João studied Law at the Universidade Nova de Lisboa. He subsequently concluded several post-graduate courses in different countries. He went on to take an LL.M. degree in Intellectual Property and Competition Law at the Munich Intellectual Property Law Center in Germany (Ohem Prize recipient). Prior to joining IViR, he worked extensively in the intellectual property and information technology areas in Portugal, both as a lawyer and as legal counsel. João conducted his doctoral research between 2012 and 2016 at the IViR and, from August to December 2014, he was a Visiting Researcher at UC Berkeley, School of Law. His dissertation, "Copyright in the Age of Online Access: Alternative Compensation Systems in EU Copyright Law", was published in 2017 in the Kluwer Information Law Series.
João is a Postdoctoral Researcher and lecturer at IViR. Starting with a focus on copyright law, João’s research agenda has developed along three research strands. First, he studies how intellectual property (IP) law applies to new technologies, from peer-to-peer networks, to streaming, hyperlinking, blockchain, and Artificial Intelligence (AI). Second, he examines the implications of copyright law and its (algorithmic) enforcement on Internet users’ rights and freedoms, on creators’ remuneration, and on technological development. Third, he assesses the role and responsibilities of large-scale platforms, especially in the context of algorithmic content moderation of user-uploaded illegal/harmful content
João’s past legal and interdisciplinary projects include: “Copyright in the Age of Online Access: Alternatives to Copyright Enforcement” (NWO Top-Project 407-11-050); the “Global Online Piracy” study; and “Reconstructing Rights: Rethinking copyright’s economic rights in a time of highly dynamic technological and economic change”.
Recent and current projects include: work on the ERC-funded Blockchain&Society Research Lab; leading a Work Package on content moderation on hosting platforms and its impact on access to culture for the Horizon 2020 project ‘reCreating Europe’; interdisciplinary projects for the European Commission tackling the challenges of AI to the IP rights framework and collective rights management in Europe; and interdisciplinary research in the project ‘Governing AI-driven Virtual Assistants’, funded the Research Priority Area Human(e) AI at the UvA.
João is also Managing Editor of the widely read Kluwer Copyright Blog, a member of the main international academic associations in the IP area (e.g. ATRIP, EPIP), the Information, Communication & the Data Society (ICDS) initiative at the UvA, and the Netherlands Network of Human Rights Research (Working Group Human Rights in the Digital Age).
João has published extensively in the area of information law. His publications are available on the list below, his IViR page or on his SSRN author page.