Ghent IP Law Institute

GIPLI co-organized AI & Business Law event

© Gert Christiaens (large view)

© Gert Christiaens

(26-05-2026) On Friday, 22 May 2026, GIPLI co-organized a conference on AI & Business Law at our campus in Ghent. In the afternoon session, we were proud to host five eminent speakers on different IP & AI topics.

After a morning session organized by our colleagues of the Financial Law Institute, the slightly heated afternoon session featured:

  • Prof. Dr. Ysolde Gendreau (Université de Montréal), taking us back to the birth of Canadian copyright law in order to draw lessons for the future;
  • Mrs. Maryam Akhlaghi Kasani (PhD candidate at the Université de Montréal), focussing on algorithmic plagiarism – an AI-related phenomenon which, unlike copyright infringements, had received little to no scholarly attention so far;
  • Mr. Michiel Roels (FWO PhD candidate at GIPLI, Ghent University), critically scrutinizing the billion-dollar settlement agreements between the major US record companies and AI-music tool providers Suno and Udio; and
  • Prof. Dr. Julien Cabay and Dr. Ir. Thomas Vandamme (Université Libre de Bruxelles), proving that current AI-infused trade-mark similarity tools are not (yet) reliable enough to draw real legal conclusions.

The afternoon session was shared by GIPLI's Prof. Dr. Simon Geiregat. The conference was made possible, in part, thanks to support of the Flemish Government.