Sonia Katyal

Sonia Katyal is the Roger J. Traynor Distinguished Professor of Law, Co-Director of the Berkeley Center for Law & Technology, and Associate Dean of Faculty Development and Research at the University of California, Berkeley School of Law. Professor Katyal’s work focuses on the intersection of technology, intellectual property, and civil rights (including antidiscrimination, privacy, and freedom of speech).

Professor Katyal’s current projects focus on artificial intelligence and intellectual property; the intersection between the right to information and human rights; trademark law and branding; and a variety of projects on the intersection between art law, cultural heritage, and new media. As a member and chair of the university-wide Haas LGBT Cluster, Professor Katyal also works on matters regarding law, gender, and sexuality.

Professor Katyal has won several awards for her work, including an honorable mention in the American Association of Law Schools Scholarly Papers Competition, a Yale Cybercrime Award, and is a three-time winner of a Dukeminier Award from the Williams Project at UCLA for her writing on gender and sexuality. Her recent articles, The Paradox of Source Code Secrecy, was selected for inclusion in the Best Intellectual Property articles of 2019; and From Trade Secrecy to Seclusion (with Tait Graves) won the Law, Science and Innovation/Intellectual Property Prize from the Sandra Day O’Connor College of Law in 2022. She has also previously published shorter pieces with The New York Times, the Brooklyn Rail, The Washington Post, CNN, Boston Globe’s Ideas section, Hyperallergic, The Los Angeles Times, Slate, and The National Law Journal, and has also been cited by the Supreme Court.

During the Obama administration, Professor Katyal was selected by U.S. Commerce Secretary Penny Pritzker to be part of the inaugural U.S. Commerce Department’s Digital Economy Board of Advisors. Before entering academia, Professor Katyal was an associate specializing in intellectual property litigation in the San Francisco office of Covington & Burling. Professor Katyal also clerked for the Honorable Carlos Moreno (later a California Supreme Court Justice) in the Central District of California and the Honorable Dorothy Nelson in the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit.