Professor Pina D’Agostino is a law professor, lawyer, public speaker, board director and internationally-recognized scholar at Osgoode Hall Law School, York University specializing in copyright law, intellectual property (IP), emerging technologies, innovation law and policy. She joined Osgoode in 2006 and is regularly called by Canadian and international governments for advice, has testified before the Canadian Parliament, is a widely published author, regularly serves as a consultant and expert witness and is a cited authority at the Supreme Court of Canada and in various media. She serves as the Editor-in-Chief for the Intellectual Property Journal and in 2022 has been recognized as the Top 25 Most Influential Lawyers in Canada by Canadian Lawyer Magazine and Top 5 in Business Law and in 2024 she is the recipient of Woman of the Year from the Canadian Italian Business Professional Association (CIBPA) and is the recipient of the recently announced 2024 Ontario Minister of Colleges and Universities Award of Excellence in Innovation and Entrepreneurship.
Dr D’Agostino brings her creativity and passion to trailblaze new initiatives and to serve in new roles as the overall Director of the $318M CFREF-funded Connected Minds: Neural & Machine Systems for a Healthy, Just Society; co-Founder and co-Director of the new Centre for Artificial Intelligence & Society (CAIS) for York University; Founding Director of IP Osgoode and the award-winning IPilogue, Founder & Director of the IP Intensive and the IP Innovation Clinic, the first and largest and first legal clinic of its kind helping inventors and start-ups in Ontario and across Canada commercialize their IP and, more recently, founded the AI-powered IP Innovation ChatBot allowing underrepresented groups and the general public greater access to IP information.
She began her legal career at a large Toronto law firm, was a Lecturer in Law at the University of Oxford, and was later recruited into the Canadian Government by the Recruitment of Policy Leaders (RPL) as a Senior Policy Analyst working on copyright policy. She serves on the Board of Directors of the Ontario Centre of Innovation (OCI) and Alectra Inc. and is the founding Chair of its GRE&T Centre Advisory Committee advancing innovation and sustainable energy solutions. She held an Order in Council Appointment at the McMichael Canadian Art Collection where she served on its Board of Directors, and currently sits on its Art Advisory Committee.
Dr D’Agostino served as an IP expert to Canada’s First Nations Information Governance Centre (FNIGC) and served as the co-chair of the York University AI & Society Task Force culminating in the Fostering the Future of Artificial Intelligence report, was appointed to the City of Vaughan Smart City Task Force and is a Senior Fellow at the Centre for International Governance Innovation (CIGI). She spent her last sabbatical as a Visiting Scholar at Stanford University. Dr D’Agostino is the recipient of various government and tri-council grants, honours and awards and is currently working on the second edition of Copyright Law (with Prof David Vaver, Irwin Law). Her peer-reviewed articles and her three books Copyright, Contract, Creators: New Media, New Rules, The Common Law of Intellectual Property: Essays in Honour of Professor David Vaver and Leading Legal Disruption: Artificial Intelligence and a Toolkit for Lawyers and the Law are widely available and is currently working on a forthcoming book on AI and Society (with Cambridge University Press 2025).
She holds a MSt and DPhil (University of Oxford) with distinction in copyright law, an LLB (Osgoode Hall Law School), an HonBA, summa cum laude, in English and Political Science and a specialization in French (York University), holds an ICD.D from the Rotman School of Management (University of Toronto) and is a member of the Law Society of Ontario (2001 call).
Research Interests: Intellectual Property, data governance & ownership, Innovation law & policy, emerging technologies (ie Artificial Intelligence, IoT, robotics, 3D printing, Blockchain etc)
Graduate Research Supervision (LLM, PhD): Professor D'Agostino is interested in supervising students who have a keen interest in any of her research areas. Students should have a strong interest in evidence-based research, comparative and international approaches and enjoy participating in the wider IP Osgoode and York community.