Patricia Akester 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.

On the international stage, over the course of her career Patricia Akester has provided 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.

Patricia Akester is 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. Previously, from 2002 to 2012, she focused on research and teaching at the University of Cambridge.

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.

Patricia Akester has been a columnist for Diário de Notícias - a distinguished Portuguese newspaper of record - since 2019, contributing opinion pieces on international affairs.

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).

Patricia Akester has been honored with several distinctions throughout her career, notably a Leverhulme Early Career Fellowship awarded by the Leverhulme Trust and the Pro-Author’s Prize conferred by Sociedade Portuguesa de Autores (SPA).