Geertrui Van Overwalle received her law degree (Master of Laws) in 1985 magna cum laude at the KU Leuven. In addition, she studied biotechnology at the Belgian Royal Society of Engineers in 1990.
In 1985 Geertrui started working at the KU Leuven as a teaching assistant at the Center for Heuristics and Methodology of Law, at the Faculty of Law and Criminology. In 1991 she joined the Centre for Intellectual Property Rights (CIR), and in 1995 she obtained her Ph.D. with a dissertation on the ‘Patentability of Plants' (see all publications here). In 2015 she joined the Centre for IT & IP Law (CiTiP) until her retirement as a full professor in September 2023.
Geertrui was appointed part-time as Professor of International and European Patent Law at the Grande École SciencesPo Law School, Paris (France, 2018-2019); Professor of Patent Law and New Technologies at the Tilburg Institute for Law, Technology and Society at Tilburg University (the Netherlands, 2008-2014); Professor of International and European Intellectual Property Law at the Law School of the University of Liège (Belgium, 2001-2009).
Geertrui has been appointed as visiting research scholar at Fudan University in Shanghai (China, 2019); Waseda University in Tokyo (Japan, 2018); Hokkaido University in Sapporo (Japan, 2018).
Geertrui has taken up positions as visiting teaching professor at Monash University, Melbourne (Australia, 2003); the University of Essex (UK, 2005-2007); the University of Amsterdam (the Netherlands, 2003-2005 ); Radboud University in Nijmegen (the Netherlands, 2002-2003); Renmin University in Beijing (China, 1993).