Dr. Mrinalini Kochupillai, Senior Research Fellow; Program Director, Max Planck Institute for Innovation & Competition
Dr. Kochupillai is a senior research fellow at the Max Planck Institute for Innovation and Competition (MPI) and a Program Director and faculty member at the Munich Intellectual Property Law Center (MIPLC), an international LL.M program focusing on EU, US and International intellectual property and competition law. She has also been an independent MIPLC research fellow (2008-2009) and a doctoral fellow with the International Max Planck Research School for Competition and Innovation (IMPRS-CI) from 2009-2013 during which time she completed her PhD titled ‘Promoting Sustainable Innovations in Plant Varieties.’ Mrinalini obtained her B.A. LL.B (Hons.) degree from the National Law Institute University, Bhopal, in 2003, and an LL.M. in Intellectual Property, Commerce and Technology from the University of New Hampshire School of Law (formerly the Franklin Pierce Law Center) in 2006. She has been a faculty member at the European Business College, Munich (2013-14), an adjunct faculty at the Franklin Pierce Law Center (University of New Hampshire), and a guest faculty at various institutes in India. She has also served as a consultant (India expert) to the International Technology Transfer Institute at the University of New Hampshire. Her research areas include patents and plant variety protection, especially in developing countries. Her current research is broadly titled ‘Ethics in Innovation’, with a focus on studying the philosophical and cultural foundations of eastern versus western approaches to innovation, including diverse means of promoting, protecting, adopting and disseminating innovations, and further aims to determine whether the current definitions and understanding of ‘innovation’ as a term and concept are inclusive enough to embrace a wide diversity of culture and country specific innovations.