By: DanP,
on 3/22/2016
Recently, patent reforms in different parts of the world have shown an emerging trend towards the emulation of Indian patent law. Countries like China, South Africa, Botswana and Brazil are now trying to amend their domestic patent laws based on India’s model. The Philippines was among the first countries to emulate India’s patent regime.
The post Transplanting India’s patent laws appeared first on OUPblog.
By: Fiona Parker,
on 1/26/2016
Although many EU IP lawyers are currently concentrating on the trade mark reforms, the Commission is quietly getting on with its study of the design protection system in Europe. The remit of the study is wide-ranging, but perhaps the most surprising issue that has arisen is whether design law in the EU should protect things that you can’t see.
The post Should design rights protect things you can’t see? appeared first on OUPblog.
By: Fiona Parker,
on 10/27/2015
Following a preliminary reference made in the context of Seattle Genetics Inc. v Österreichisches Patentamt, the Court of Justice of the European Union has put an end to the uncertainty faced by both the innovative and the generic pharmaceutical industries regarding the duration of the effective patent protection afforded to medicinal products.
The post A European victory for the pharmaceutical industry appeared first on OUPblog.
By: Fiona Parker,
on 10/13/2015
Defining “privacy” has proven akin to a search for the philosopher’s stone. None of the numerous theories proposed over the years seems to encompass all the varied facets of the concept. In considering the meaning of privacy, it can be fruitful to examine how a great artist of the past has dealt with aspects of private life that retain their relevance in the Internet age.
The post A Chekhovian view of privacy for the internet age appeared first on OUPblog.
By: Fiona Parker,
on 10/6/2015
In 2008 Iceland experienced one of the worst financial crises in history, which involved the collapse of all three of its major commercial banks. The causes of this collapse were numerous and complex, and included the banks’ difficulty in refinancing their short-term debt and a run on their deposits.
The post The Icelanders, the Cypriots, and the Greeks: is history repeating itself? appeared first on OUPblog.
By: Fiona Parker,
on 9/8/2015
As a young ICSID neophyte, I once asked Aron Broches, the World Bank’s General Counsel from 1959 to 1979, how he had come up with the idea for the Centre. “It was in the air,” he explained. In the late 1950s and early 1960s, there were indeed a number of proposals circulating for the creation of an international arbitral mechanism for the settlement of investment disputes.
The post Establishing ICSID: an idea that was “in the air” appeared first on OUPblog.
By: Louise Murgatroyd,
on 8/4/2015
Knowing when and how to cross-examine is an essential part of properly representing clients in international arbitrations. Many cases have been won by good cross-examinations and lost by bad cross-examinations, and that is just as true in international arbitrations as it is in any other dispute resolution procedure in which counsel are permitted to cross-examine witnesses.
The post The role of cross-examination in international arbitration appeared first on OUPblog.
By: Heather Saunders,
on 7/21/2015
Why should firms compete? The belief is that through competition society benefits with lower prices, better quality and services, and more innovation. Indeed, anyone who frequents restaurants or hotels protected from competition can recount the inferior meal, poor service, and high price. By contrast, in a competitive environment we expect more quality, for less.
The post The curious case of competition and quality appeared first on OUPblog.
By: Miranda Dobson,
on 6/30/2015
Hedge funds and other investment funds are emerging as sophisticated litigators, viewing litigation as an asset, which can create value and mitigate risk, rather than something to be avoided or feared. As a consequence, both the market and various legal systems are being disciplined and developed. How and why is this happening? Willing to litigate relentlessly and fearlessly, hedge funds will seek out and find gaps in documents and uncertainties in the law, and exploit them with ruthless efficiency, entering new legal territory and pushing the boundary of legal theories.
The post Hedge funds and litigation: A brave new world appeared first on OUPblog.
By: Miranda Dobson,
on 6/2/2015
When Roman censor Appius Claudius Caecus commissioned the city's first aqueduct in 312 BC, he started a network which would grow to some 500 kilometres and sustain a population of one million. There is no record of the contract awarded, but it likely specified that the Aqua Appia be built mostly underground to protect it from contamination and sabotage. It was kept in use for over 250 years, undergoing various renovations and expansions.
The post Government by contract: Who prods the procurers? appeared first on OUPblog.
By: Miranda Dobson,
on 2/3/2015
A few days ago The Hollywood Reporter featured another interesting story concerning Martin Luther King or – to be more precise – his pretty litigious estate.
This time the fuss is about already critically acclaimed (The New York Times critic in residence, AO Scott, called it “a triumph of efficient, emphatic cinematic storytelling”) biopic Selma, starring David Oyelowo as the Rev Dr Martin Luther King, Jr.
The film starts with King’s acceptance of the Nobel Peace Prize in December 1964 and focuses on the three 1965 marches in Alabama that eventually led to the adoption of the Voting Rights Act later that year.
The King estate has not expressly objected to the making of this film. However, back in 2009 the same estate had granted DreamWorks and Warner Bros a licence to reproduce King’s speeches in a film that Steven Spielberg is set to produce but has yet to see the light. Apparently Selma producers attempted in vain to get permission to reproduce King’s speeches in their film. What happened in the end was that the authors of the script had to convey the same meaning of King’s speeches without using the actual words he had employed.
Put it otherwise: Selma is a film about Martin Luther King that does not feature any actual extracts from his historic speeches.
Still in his NYT review, AO Scott wrote that “Dr. King’s heirs did not grant permission for his speeches to be quoted in “Selma,” and while this may be a blow to the film’s authenticity, [the film director] turns it into an advantage, a chance to see and hear him afresh.”
Indeed, the problem of authenticity has been raised by some commentators who have argued that, because of copyright constraints, historical accuracy has been negatively affected.
But is this all copyright’s fault? Is it really true that if you are not granted permission to reproduce a copyright-protected work, you cannot quote from it?
“The social benefit in having a truthful depiction of King’s actual words would be much greater than the copyright owners’ loss.”
Well, probably not. Copyright may have many faults and flaws, but certainly does not prevent one from quoting from a work, provided that use of the quotation can be considered a fair use (to borrow from US copyright language) of, or fair dealing (to borrow from other jurisdictions, e.g. UK) with such work. Let’s consider the approach to quotation in the country of origin, i.e. the United States.
§107 of the US Copyright Act states that the fair use of a work is not an infringement of copyright. As the US Supreme Court stated in the landmark Campbell decision, the fair use doctrine “permits and requires courts to avoid rigid application of the copyright statute when, on occasion, it would stifle the very creativity that the law is designed to foster.”
Factors to consider to determine whether a certain use of a work is fair include:
There is fairly abundant case law on fair use as applied to biographies. With particular regard to the re-creation of copyright-protected works (as it would have been the case of Selma, should Oyelowo/King had reproduced actual extracts from King’s speeches), it is worth recalling the recent (2014) decision of the US District Court for the Southern District of New York in Arrow Productions v The Weinstein Company.
This case concerned Deep Throat‘s Linda Lovelace biopic, starring Amanda Seyfried. The holders of the rights to the “famous [1972] pornographic film replete with explicit sexual scenes and sophomoric humor” claimed that the 2013 film infringed – among other things – their copyright because three scenes from Deep Throat had been recreated without permission. In particular, the claimants argued that the defendants had reproduced dialogue from these scenes word for word, positioned the actors identically or nearly identically, recreated camera angles and lighting, and reproduced costumes and settings.
The court found in favour of the defendants, holding that unauthorised reproduction of Deep Throat scenes was fair use of this work, also stressing that critical biographical works (as are both Lovelace and Selma) are “entitled to a presumption of fair use”.
In my opinion reproduction of extracts from Martin Luther King’s speeches would not necessarily need a licence. It is true that the fourth fair use factor might weigh against a finding of fair use (this is because the Martin Luther King estate has actually engaged in the practice of licensing use of his speeches). However the social benefit in having a truthful depiction of King’s actual words would be much greater than the copyright owners’ loss. Also, it is not required that all four fair use factors weigh in favour of a finding of fair use, as recent judgments, e.g. Cariou v Prince or Seltzer v Green Day, demonstrate. Additionally, in the context of a film like Selma in which Martin Luther King is played by an actor (not incorporating the filmed speeches actually delivered by King), it is arguable that the use of extracts would be considered highly transformative.
In conclusion, it would seem that in principle that US law would not be against the reproduction of actual extracts from copyright-protected works (speeches) for the sake of creating a new work (a biographic film).
This article originally appeared on The IPKat in a slightly different format on Monday 12 January 2015.
Featured image credit: Dr. Martin Luther King speaking against war in Vietnam, St. Paul Campus, University of Minnesota, by St. Paul Pioneer Press. Minnesota Historical Society. CC-BY-2.0 via Flickr.
The post Selma and re-writing history: Is it a copyright problem? appeared first on OUPblog.
By: DanP,
on 1/27/2015
The OECD’s Guidelines on the Protection of Privacy and Transborder Flows of Personal Data (1980) were an early influence on the development of data privacy laws in Asia. Other bodies have since also been influential in the formulation of data privacy laws across Asia, including the 1981 Council of Europe Data Protection Convention, the United Nations Guidelines for the Regulation of Computer Data Files, the European Union’s Data Protection Directive, and the APEC Privacy Guidelines.
This timeline below shows the development of data privacy laws across numerous different Asian territories over the past 35 years. In each case it maps the year a data privacy law or equivalent was created, as well as providing some further information about each. It also maps the major guidelines and pieces of legislation from various global bodies, including those mentioned above.
Featured image credit: Data (scrabble), by justgrimes. CC-BY-SA 2.0 via Flickr.
The post A brief history of Data Privacy Law in Asia appeared first on OUPblog.
By: Miranda Dobson,
on 12/16/2014
On the subject of competition law inspections and similar procedures, tensions have been building between the European Court of Human Rights (ECtHR) and the Court of Justice of the European Union (EUCJ). The latest case-law appears like a step in the direction of reconciling the two. One of the crucial points that must be resolved in the future is the lawfulness of the authorities’ extensive digital evidence gathering during on-site inspections. Such searches are nowadays a matter of routine, although the law seems to be lagging behind. Not only must the lawfulness of those measures be resolved, but also the matter of procedure. Companies subject to inspections have gone to court repeatedly in order to obtain up-front judicial control of specific measures such as copying and mirroring of hard drives and servers.
Delta Pekárny concerned a competition law inspection. The inspection began with an examination of digital correspondence. Delta Pekárny was subsequently fined for refusing to allow an in-depth examination of its data. It challenged that decision, arguing, among other points, that it was contrary to domestic law and to the European Convention on Human Rights (ECHR) for the Czech Competition Authority to carry out an inspection without having received prior authorisation from a court. In the judgment, the ECtHR makes references to EU law, to a comparative study of the investigative procedures prevailing in all Member States, and to the Commission’s inspection powers. The ECtHR considered that in the absence of a prior judicial authorisation by a judge, an effective control afterwards of the necessity of the measure, and rules on destruction of copies made, the procedural guarantees were insufficient to prevent the risk of an abuse of powers. There had been a violation of Article 8 of the ECHR (right to respect for private and family life, home and correspondence).
The ECtHR’s legal assessment in Delta Pekárny cannot, in my opinion, be seen as a criticism of the investigation procedure under Regulation 1/2003, a procedure that has been copied in several Member States. Rather, the outcome seems specific to the procedural rules applicable in the Czech Republic.
Delta Pekárny builds partly on Robathin, a case that concerned a search warrant at the office of an Austrian practicing lawyer who was suspected of aggravated theft, aggravated fraud and embezzlement. The warrant was issued by an investigating judge in the context of criminal proceedings. All files of the lawyer’s computer system were copied. The ECtHR held that domestic law and practice must afford adequate and effective safeguards against any abuse and arbitrariness. There should be particular reasons to allow the search of all data, having regard to the specific circumstances prevailing in a law office. There were no such reasons either in the search warrant itself or in any other document. The ECtHR found that the seizure and examination of all data went beyond what was necessary to achieve the legitimate aim. There was a violation of Article 8 of the ECHR.
The Robathin case concerned classic or hard core criminality. Depending on the circumstances, a competition law fine can be considered a criminal penalty. Competition law cases nevertheless lean more towards the administrative enforcement side, and this can influence the procedural requirements.
A hint at how the ECtHR may regard competition law dawn raids came in Bernh Larsen Holding. The case concerned a tax inspection.Three companies used a server jointly and the Norwegian tax authorities copied the entire sever content. The inspection order was adopted without prior judicial authorisation. Volumes of surplus information without importance for the tax inspection had been copied, including private correspondence and business secrets. The ECtHR accepted considerations of efficiency of the tax audit, but made clear that this did not confer on the tax authorities an unfettered discretion. The Court assessed whether the measure was necessary and proportionate. There was a wider margin of appreciation since the measure was aimed at legal persons and not at an individual. The nature of the interference was not of the same seriousness and degree as in the case of search and seizure carried out under criminal law since the consequences of a tax subject’s refusal to cooperate were exclusively administrative. The outcome was that the Norwegian order had been subject to important limitations and was accompanied by effective and adequate safeguards against abuse. There was no violation of Article 8 of the ECHR.
The judgments of the ECtHR can be seen in relation to those of the EUCJ. In Nexans, the Commission carried out a dawn-raid and decided to remove four DVD-ROM discs and a copy of the hard drive of the laptop of an employee of Nexans France, for later review at its premises in Brussels. The inspection decision, as well as the mirroring measures and other measures, were appealed to the General Court. Nexans’ claim relating to the Commission’s decision to remove copies of certain computer files and of the hard drive, was deemed inadmissible. After reminding that Nexans could bring its claims within an appeal against a final decision, the General Court pointed out that Nexans could also bring an action for damages against the Commission if it believed that copying of several computer files and of a hard drive for later examination in its offices was illegal and had caused harm. There was consequently no assessment in substance.
“Step by step, the Court in Strasbourg is moving into domains that have, for many years, primarily been a matter for the EUCJ”
An outcome which appears opposite can be observed in Deutsche Bahn. Deutsche Bahn challenged three Commission inspection decisions. One of the claims was that Deutsche Bahn’s defence rights had been infringed in view of irregularities during the first inspection. According to Deutsche Bahn, the second and third inspections were based on information that had been unlawfully obtained during the first inspection. Among other things, the Commission had searched certain e-mails that were clearly unrelated to the subject-matter of the first inspection. Allegedly the Commission officials had also used certain keywords unrelated to the inspection during their electronic search. The General Court looked into all those aspects in relative detail and finally rejected the plea as unfounded. The General Court’s judgment has been appealed.
While the General Court’s judgment in Nexans seems somewhat difficult to reconcile with the case-law of the ECtHR, the approach in Deutsche Bahn appears to be more in line with the methodology envisaged by the ECtHR in Robathin and Bernh Larsen Holding. The facts of Delta Pekárny may be too specifically related to Czech domestic law to be of general application. Nevertheless, the ECtHR’s approach is telling. Step by step, the Court in Strasbourg is moving into domains that have, for many years, primarily been a matter for the EUCJ. This as such, should come as no surprise. The EUCJ has made references to the ECHR for decades in competition law rulings. Can we in the years to come expect to see a mutual alignment?
Featured image credit: FW Pomeroy’s statue of Justice atop the Old Bailey. Photo by Ben Sutherland. CC-BY-2.0 via Flickr
The post Digital evidence gathering during inspections appeared first on OUPblog.
By: Miranda Dobson,
on 12/14/2014
When “The Case of the Black Macaque” scooped media headlines this summer, copyright was suddenly big news. Here was photographer David Slater fighting Wikipedia over the right to disseminate online a portrait photo of a monkey which had, contrary to all expectations and the law of averages, managed within just a few jabs of a curious finger, to take a plausible, indeed publishable “selfie”. Did Slater have the right to control the image since it was his camera on which it was recorded, or was it free for the world to use on the basis that he was not its author, the true creator being the crested black macaque who, for all her charm and dexterity, was neither a real nor legal person and therefore disentitled to any legal rights?
Disputes like this make great headlines, but cause even greater headaches for the intellectual property (“IP”) community. Most have little legal substance to them and are interesting only because of their facts, but that’s what drives journalists’ involvement and readers’ interest, making it easier for the media to attract paying advertisers. By the time they pass through the media machine these tales are frequently mangled to the point at which IP lawyers can scarcely recognise them. In one recent case involving a well-known chocolate brand, a company was said to have patented its copyright in England in order to sue a business in Switzerland for trade mark infringement. To the layman this may sound fine, but it’s about as sensible to the expert as telling the doctor that you’ve got a tummy ache in your little finger because your cat ate the goldfish last night. We IP-ers try to explain the real story, but monkeys and selfies are far more fun than the intricacies of copyright law and, by the time we’ve tried to put the record straight, the next exciting story has already broken.
“By the time they pass through the media machine, these tales are frequently mangled to the point at which IP lawyers can scarcely recognise them”
The next selfie episode to hit the headlines, far from featuring a portrait, was quite the opposite end of the anatomical spectrum. Model Kim Kardashian objected that Jen Selter’s selfies constituted copyright infringements of photos which had been taken of Kim Kardashian’s bottom (occasionally colloquially described as her “trademark” bottom, but not yet registered in conventional legal fashion). Here the only questions IP lawyers address are (i) are the pictures of Kim Kardashian’s backside copyright-protected works and (ii) does the taking by Jen Selter of selfies of her own posterior constitute an infringement? For press and public, however, the issue morphs into the much more entertaining, if legally irrelevant, one of whether a person has copyright in their own bottom.
![By Self-portrait by the depicted Macaca nigra female. See article. (Wtop.com) [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons](http://blogoup.electricstudiolt.netdna-cdn.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/12/Macaca_nigra_self-portrait_large-628x744.jpg)
There are many IP rights apart from copyright and they all have their macaque moments. Trade mark law is full of episodes of evil corporations stealing words from the English language and stopping anyone else using them. Patent law (in which the legal protection of body parts very much smaller than bottoms, such as sequences of DNA, does have some relevance) is garnished with tales of greed and intrigue as people seek to steal one another’s ideas and avariciously monopolise them. Confidentiality and the right to publicity have their own rip-roaring encounters in court as amorous footballers who are “playing away” seek to hush up their extramarital (that’s one word, not two) exploits. Meanwhile, the women with whom they shared moments of illicit intimacy seek to cash in on their news value by selling them to the highest bidder. For IP lawyers the legal issues are serious and, when cases come to court, they achieve precedential status that governs how future episodes of the same nature might be handled. For press and public, the issues are different: who is the footballer, who is the woman — and are there any pictures (ideally selfies)?
Seriously, the rate at which not just eye-catching tales like those related above but also far less glamorous tales result in litigation, or even legislation, makes it hard-to-impossible for practitioners, academics, administrators and businessmen to keep abreast of the law, let alone understand its deeper significance for those affected by it: businesses, governments, consumers, indeed everyone. Publishers like OUP are increasingly raising the tempo of their own responses to the IP information challenge, utilising both formal and informal media, in print and online. Since legal publishing is largely reactive, we can narrow the gap between the time an exciting new event or legal decision hits the popular media and the point at which we can strip it down to its bare legal essentials. But it will take more than a little monkeying around before we can close that gap completely.
Featured image credit: Camera selfie, by Paul Rysz. CC-BY-2.0 via Flickr.
The post Selfies and model bottoms: monkeying around with intellectual property rights appeared first on OUPblog.
By: DanP,
on 11/25/2014
How does the law operate when intellectual property rights overlap? When a creative output, be it a photograph, a piece of music, or any artistic work, is protected by multiple intellectual property rights such as trademark and copyright, or a patent and data protection, it can be challenging to manoeuvre through the overlapping rights. Intellectual property law seeks to defend the rights of the artistic creator, and protects the expression of ideas, but when these rights overlap in both law and practice, how do they interact?
This is a question that Neil Wilkof, member of the Bressler Group, special IP counsel to Herzog, and Fox & Neeman, Israel, was faced with when a student asked him how overlapping trademarks and copyright might operate. Here, Wilkof discusses how this question might be tackled:
In practice, intellectual property rights very rarely occur independently; there is usually an overlap. Here, Wilkof explains how the disjuncture between written law and practice can be addressed by looking at intellectual property from a practical, rather than theoretical, perspective:
With the issues of overlapping intellectual property rights in mind, Wilkof goes on to discuss how this area of law might change and develop in the future:
The post The past, present, and future of overlapping intellectual property rights appeared first on OUPblog.
By: Catherine Fehre,
on 11/18/2014
On Tuesday 25th and Wednesday 26th November we are looking forward to returning to Brussels for the IBC Advanced EU Competition Law. The conference will see some of the leading competition lawyers, regulators, competition authorities, economists, legal advisors, and academics come together to discuss cartels, private enforcement, vertical restraints, state aid, mergers, and more. To find out what you can expect from the conference, watch the video highlights from last year, including a clip of our very own Francesca Halstead.
One of the key discussion topics this year focuses on cartels. We have been doing our homework and have prepared this infographic which examines legislative updates from the UK and key cases from around the EU, from the Finnish Asphalt Cartel to the Romanian Construction Cartel, and many more in-between. It also shows a step-by-step summary of the Settlement Process, and summarises the Leniency Notice. Content has been taken from Oxford Competition Law and made free to access so that you can prepare and be up-to-date ahead of the conference.
Oxford Competition Law is the only fully integrated service to combine world-renowned market-leading commentaries with rigorous, selective National case reports and analysis from EU member states. Please do stop by our stand to find out more about our latest publishing, and claim your free trial to Oxford Competition Law.
If you would like to view this infographic as an interactive PDF, please click here to discover more about Competition Law.
Headline image credit: Justice Painting, by Hans. Public domain via Pixabay.
The post A guide to European cartels appeared first on OUPblog.
By: DanP,
on 10/28/2014
We are pleased to introduce the marketing team for the Commercial Law department at OUP. Chris, Simon, and Miranda work with journals, online resources, and books published on a variety of subjects which relate to the rights and practice of people in business. The resources they work with are used by practicing lawyers, academics and students, and cover a range of topics including competition law, energy, arbitration, and financial law. Get to know more about them below:
Chris Wogan
What is your role in OUP’s Commercial Law department?
I’m Chris, the Marketing Manager for Commercial Law. I plan, implement, and execute marketing strategy for Oxford’s Commercial Law portfolio.
What is the best part of your job/highlight of working at OUP?
The people you get to work with are so much fun. There are some incredibly bright and talented people at Oxford, and I love making our authors and customers happy – that is a really great part of the job. Also, the variety – working in marketing at OUP means you get to try new and different things all the time, it’s a truly interesting place to work, and an exciting time to be in marketing.
Which three songs could you not live without?
Song for Zula – The Phosphorescent
Dream the Dare – Pure Bathing Culture
On the Sea – Beach House
What’s your favourite place in Oxford?
There are so many lovely places around Oxford, including Jericho, Cowley and the colleges, but my favourite place would have to be the walk round Christchurch meadow.
What is your favourite fiction book and why?
I have lots of favourites, it’s difficult to pick just one! I’m a huge fan of James Joyce so will pick one of his – A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man. It’s debatable how fictional it is, but the language is incredible. Or Villette.
If you were in a Hogwarts house, which would it be?
I’d like to think it would be Gryffindor, but in reality it would probably be Ravenclaw.
Simon Jared
What is your role in OUP’s Commercial Law department?
I’m the Marketing Executive for Commercial Law and work mostly on our book products, though I do also pitch in with our online products and journals.
What is the best part of your job/highlight of working at OUP?
The best part of working at OUP is definitely the people here. I’ve made a lot of friends and there are loads of friendly and creative people around (especially in marketing!). The best part of the job is the diversity. We have a lot of products and types of products, and we’re doing more and more exciting things with digital, content, and social marketing to promote them. We also still get to attend events and meet our authors and other lawyers.
What’s your favourite place in Oxford?
My favourite place in Oxford is the top of the hill in Raleigh Park for two reasons. One: I think the best view of Oxford is from above, with all the spires, domes, and old buildings. Two: I only ever go there when I’m out running and it means the rest of my run is downhill!
Who is the most famous person you’ve met?
I once walked into Paloma Faith on The Strand (not intentionally).
Which three songs could you not live without?
The End – The Doors
Mine for the Summer – by my friend Sam Brawn
Gone – Kanye West
Do you have any hidden talents?
Yes, but I’ve forgotten where I hid them.
If you were in a Hogwarts house, which would it be?
Hufflepuff, because the name amuses me.
Miranda Dobson
What is your role in OUP’s Commercial Law department?
I am the newest member of the team, and recently started as the Marketing Assistant for the Commercial Law department.
What’s your favourite place in Oxford?
I’ve only just moved to the city, and it’s such a beautiful place it would be difficult to choose somewhere as a favourite. However, when I’m not hanging out with daffodils, I am a sucker for a good bar or pub, and there are some great places in the Jericho area of Oxford to mooch between!
What is your favourite fiction book and why?
My favourite book is The Time Traveler’s Wife by Audrey Niffenegger, simply because I think it’s the perfect novel. I love how the book uses different perspectives through diary entries and a jumbled up time scale. It combines science fiction with a love story; it has violence; it has time travel; it has romance… what more could you want?
Who is the most famous person you’ve met?
I once met Judy Dench (Dame) in Disney Land Paris, she was all in white and looked very stern, but we spoke to her and she was lovely!
What is your biggest pet peeve?
When people have a first name for their last name… you can’t trust those people.
Which three songs could you not live without?
Ain’t no mountain high enough – Marvin Gaye and Tammi Terrell
Take me to church – Hozier
Say you’ll be there – The Spice Girls (no shame)
If you were in a Hogwarts house, which would it be?
I’d be in Slytherin, because green is my colour and just like Draco and Snape, beneath my cold, evil-seeming exterior, I actually do have a heart.
Featured image credi: Lady Justice, at the Old Bailey, by Natural Philo. CC-BY-SA-3.0 via Wikimedia Commons.
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