Patrícia Akester is a lawyer and author working at the intersection of law, technology and ethics, where legal language is continually tested by the velocity of innovation. Through research, consultancy and writing, she seeks to understand and safeguard the invisible architecture that allows authorship and human dignity to find refuge within the law.

She holds a Law degree from the Catholic University of Lisbon (1994), an LLM in Intellectual Property Law from University College London (1997) and a PhD in Copyright and the Challenges of Digital Technology from the Queen Mary Intellectual Property Research Institute, Queen Mary University of London (2002). She was admitted to practice as a Registered European Lawyer at Lincoln’s Inn, Bar Association of England and Wales from 2009 to 2020 and has been a member of the Portuguese Bar Association since 1996.

Her education shaped a method that unites legal rigour with moral awareness. Each academic degree became a vantage point from which to observe how law, culture, and innovation redefine one another.

On the international stage, over the course of her career, Patricia Akester has provided legal counsel to leading international organisations, including UNESCO (Paris), the Aga Khan Development Network (Paris, Lisbon), the Motion Picture Association of America (California) and the Anne Frank Fonds (Basel). In Portugal, she served as Of Counsel at Sérvulo & Associates between 2012 and early 2019, where she founded an Intellectual Property Clinic in 2015 to support high-tech companies. In February 2019, she established her own Legal Consultancy Office, dedicated exclusively to Copyright Law, Artificial Intelligence and Human Rights.

These experiences have given her work a comparative rhythm, a habit of thought that recognises difference yet searches for a common legal lexicon. Whether advising international institutions or emerging enterprises, her purpose has remained constant: to reconcile law, innovation and the ethics of creation.

A former Leverhulme Early Career Fellow with the University of Cambridge, where she devoted a decade to research and teaching, Patricia Akester is currently an Associate with the Centre for Intellectual Property and Information Law (CIPIL), University of Cambridge, where she co-edits and conducts research on the Portuguese-Brazilian segment of Primary Sources on Copyright.

For her, research is not an abstraction but a civic act, but the place where law tests its limits and meaning, anticipating the change it must embrace to remain true to itself. Teaching, in turn, is a form of translation: transforming complexity into understanding without abandoning depth.

She has published extensively, authoring and contributing to numerous books and articles in the field, including, in the UK, Sterling on World Copyright Law (Sweet & Maxwell, London) as a contributor (since 2009) and, in Portugal, as sole author:

• Copyright Law in Portugal, Portuguese-speaking African Countries, EU and International Treaties (Coimbra, Almedina, 2013)
• Annotated Portuguese Copyright Law and Related Rights Code (Coimbra, Almedina, 1st edition in 2017; 2nd edition in 2019; 3rd edition in 2024) with an article-by-article commentary.

In each of these works, she has sought to interpret the law not only through its text but through its ethical dimension, exploring the dialogue between protection and access, between the voice of creators and the responsibility of institutions. Legal commentary thus becomes an exercise in lucidity, an attempt to reconcile the letter of the law with its human purpose.

Patricia Akester is also a columnist and media analyst, commenting on the legal, ethical and policy implications of AI and geopolitics on national television and in the press.

Her public commentary follows the same principle: behind every technological or geopolitical debate lies a legal question, and at the heart of every legal question, an ethical one. It is within this space, where law confronts conscience, between what is possible and what is due, that her reflection takes shape.

She serves on the Editorial Board of the Portuguese Bar Association Journal (since 2020), on the Editorial Board of the European Copyright and Design Reports (since 2020) and as Vice President of the Portuguese chapter of the Association Littéraire et Artistique Internationale - founded in Paris in 1878 by Victor Hugo (since 2023).

Across all these domains, academic, professional, and public, her work stems from a single conviction. Law is not an instrument of power, but a language of responsibility.

Law as conscience.  Thought as public service. Clarity as resistance.