Prof. Dr.h.c. JUDr. Jan Kříž, CSc.

(b. 1950, in Turnov) graduated from the Faculty of Law of Charles University in Prague. He is a founder and member partner of the Kříž & Bělina law firm. An attorney-at law since 1990, he specialises in copyright and civil law. In the early 1990s he was a member of the Legislative Council of the Czech Government and in the latter half of the 1990s, he became a member of the legislative and legal advisory body attached to the Municipality of Prague. He is currently a member of the Consultative Advisory Body of Lawyers convoked by the President of the Republic. In addition to his practice as an attorney-at-law, he is the Director of the Institute of Copyright, Industrial Property Rights and Competition Law at the Faculty of Law of Charles University. He deals with rights to intellectual property in their application in practice and also in his academic and legislative activities. He is the author and co-author of many specialised monographs and articles in professional journals. He spent one year on a fellowship in Germany, at the Max-Planck-Institut in Munich. Over the years, he has taught in German and English at many institutions of higher education outside the Czech Republic and in 2002 was appointed an honorary member of the academic community of the Faculty of Law of the University of Passau. Professor Kříž is a member of many international organisations (for example, AIPPI and INTERGU) and he served two terms as Chairman of the Arbitration Commission of the Council on Advertising. He is an arbitrator of the Arbitration Court attached to the Economic Chamber of the Czech Republic and the Agricultural Chamber of the Czech Republic.