July 26-27, 1999
Montreal, Canada

Speaker Biography

Francis Gurry

Assistant Director General and Legal Counsel
World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO)

Francis Gurry, a national of Australia, is Assistant Director General and the Legal Counsel of the World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO) in Geneva, where he is responsible for WIPO's activities in the field of electronic commerce and the WIPO Arbitration and Mediation Center, as well as for international legal and constitutional questions and the Organization's relations with industry. He holds law degrees from the University of Melbourne and a Doctor of Philosophy from the University of Cambridge in the United Kingdom. He is a Vice President of the International Federation of Commercial Arbitration Institutions (IFCAI).

Before joining WIPO in 1985, he practiced as an attorney in Melbourne and Sydney and also taught law at the University of Melbourne. He is the author of a textbook on the law of trade secrets and confidential information, entitled Breach of Confidence, published by Oxford University Press in the United Kingdom in 1984 and re-printed in 1990, and co-author, with Frederick Abbott and Thomas Cottier, of The International Intellectual Property System: Commentary and Materials, published by Kluwer in July 1999.