Peter Menell
Koret Professor of Law
Department: School of Law
Colleges / Universities: University of California, Berkeley
Contact
686 Simon Hall
Berkeley, CA 94720-3880
Email: pmenell@law.berkeley.edu
Website: UC Berkeley faculty page
Peter S. Menell is the Koret Professor of Law at the University of California, Berkeley School of Law. He has written extensively on intellectual property, cyberlaw, and environmental law, and has examined economic aspects of intellectual property and environmental regulation.
After graduating from law school, Peter Menell clerked for Judge Jon O. Newman of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 2nd Circuit. He joined the Boalt faculty in 1990 and co-founded the Berkeley Center for Law & Technology in 1995, where he serves as a director. Menell has visited at the Georgetown University Law Center, Harvard Law School, and Stanford Law School; taught an annual course on U.S. intellectual property law at the ETH (Zurich) since 1997; and organized more than two dozen intellectual property education programs for the Federal Judicial Center since 1998.
He founded and supervises the Annual Review of Law and Technology (now in its 11th year, published by the Berkeley Technology Law Journal) and founded the Annual Review of Environmental and Natural Resource Law (published by the Ecology Law Quarterly).
Degrees
Ph.D. Stanford University, 1986
J.D. Harvard Law School, 1986
M.A. Stanford University, 1982
S.B. Massachusetts Institute of Technology, 1980
Recent Academic Article Summaries
Misreading Campbell: Lessons for Warhol
Rereading the case in which the Supreme Court first recognized transformative fair use could help the Supreme Court resolve tension between derivative rights and transformative fair use in Andy Warhol Foundation v. Goldsmith.
Tailored remedies can avoid a chilling effect on free speech in close cases.
The Use of Technical Experts in Software Copyright Cases: Rectifying the Ninth Circuit’s “Nutty” Rule
The Ninth Circuit has ruled that experts may not testify to help juries understand whether one computer program is similar to another. Ninth Circuit cases fail to properly assess software copyright violations.
The Ninth Circuit has ruled differently from other Circuits on this issue. The Supreme Court should establish a national rule.
Mashups and Fair Use: The Bold Misadventures of the Seussian Starship Enterprise
A book that placed Star Trek characters in illustrations from Dr. Seuss is an unauthorized derivative work under the Copyright Act. The District Court erred in ruling that the book was a “fair use.”
“Fair use” should not allow the unauthorized creation of commercial works that compete with the original.
Intellectual Property in the New Technological Age: 2016 - Chapters 1 and 2
These chapters of Intellectual Property in the New Technological Age: 2016 examine the justifications for intellectual property (IP) law, which includes trade secret, copyright, patent, and trademark law. Trade Secret law protects information used by a business from misappropriation.
IP law constantly changes in response to developments in the courts and in Congress. Real-life situations often call for application of more than one type of IP law.
Economic Analysis of Copyright Notice: Tracing and Scope in the Digital Age
Decades ago, the rule that copyrighted works must include a formal copyright notice was eliminated. Today, digital technology enables authors and artists to reuse old works in new ones, but lack of formal copyright notice makes it hard for them to identify copyrighted works.
Requiring works to include copyright information would be practical and fair, and would encourage the creation of new works.
Blog Posts
Related Scholars
Christopher Sprigman
Colleges / Universities: New York University
Suzanne Scotchmer
Colleges / Universities: University of California, Berkeley
Bronwyn Hall
Colleges / Universities: University of California, Berkeley
Bruce Kobayashi
Colleges / Universities: George Mason University
