Dr Amanda McBratney

Biography

After working in practice Amanda undertook her Master of Laws in London, returning to Australia to teach at the University of Queensland for five years. While at UQ Amanda taught Contract Law and tutored in Equity and Land Transactions. She also developed and taught new postgraduate units in Patent law, Intellectual Property in Biotechnology and Intellectual Property Transactions.
She completed her doctoral thesis entitled 'Between Scylla and Charybdis: Navigating Patent Amendment Law in Australia' in 2003, and her PhD work on patent fair basing was cited by the Australian High Court in 2004.
Amanda later re-entered practice to consult with Brisbane law firm McCullough Robertson. She is co-author of the text Licensing Technology with Dr Noel Byrne, and is also an Adjunct Research Fellow at Queen Mary College, University of London.
Amanda is currently working on her first Early Career QUT-funded research project, 'What's good for the goose?'  This project aims to build a picture of current government-nonprofit contracting practices, and also aims to identify the ideal or preferred elements of a successful service provider relationship. 
The first phase of the study will review a number of government-nonprofit human service contracts, which will be benchmarked against new federal government laws on contract terms.  The second phase of the study will investigate the stakeholders' views on their contracts, and whether the contract form chosen could be critical to a successful outcome, rather than just focusing on contract terms.  The project will run throughout 2010.
Research interests

• Contract law, use of contracts in international research collaborations, streamlining contractual negotiations


• International and comparative competition law, emerging Asia Pacific antitrust laws


• International and comparative intellectual property law, commercialisation issues, licensing, contract drafting and formation.