LL.D Taina Pihlajarinne is a professor of copyright law (Docent of Commercial Law), researching and teaching intellectual property rights. Currently she serves as a vice dean responsible for research at the Faculty of Law.

Her research interests are focused on the impacts of digitalization and technological advances on intellectual property rights as well as on the relationship between sustainability and IPRs. 

Pihlajarinne has been a leader of several research projects, and the received competitive funding with Pihlajarinne as PI altogether exceeds 1,8 million euros since 2012. Her ongoing research projects include a project "Shaping, fixing and making markets via IPR: regulating sustainable innovation ecosystems" (Funded by the Academy of Finland) and a project "Legal aspects of utilisation of AI in news production" (Funded by Helsingin Sanomat foundation). 

Pihlajarinne is, inter alia, a member of the research group "Companies, Markets and Sustainability" at the University of Oslo Faculty of Law and a member of the Helsinki Institute of Sustainability Science (HELSUS).