Mark A. Lemley
Mark A. Lemley
- William H. Neukom Professor of Law
- Director, Program in Law, Science & Technology
- Room N215, Neukom Building
Expertise
- Antitrust Law
- Artificial Intelligence
- Biotechnology
- Copyright Law
- Intellectual Property
- Intellectual Property & Antitrust
- Internet & Cyberlaw
- Law & Economics
- Patent Law
- Property Law
- Technology & the Law
- Trade Regulation
- Trade Secrets
- Trademarks
Biography
Mark Lemley is the William H. Neukom Professor of Law at Stanford Law School and the Director of the Stanford Program in Law, Science and Technology. He is also a Senior Fellow at the Stanford Institute for Economic Policy Research and as affiliated faculty in the Symbolic Systems program. He teaches intellectual property, patent law, trademark law, antitrust, the law of robotics and AI, video game law, and remedies. He is the author of eight books and 175 articles, including the two-volume treatise IP and Antitrust. His works have been cited more than 270 times by courts, including 15 times by the United States Supreme Court, and more than 17,000 times in books and law review articles, making him the most-cited scholar in IP law and one of the five most cited legal scholars of all time. He has published 9 of the 100 most-cited law review articles of the last twenty years, more than any other scholar. His articles have appeared in 23 of the top 25 law reviews, in top economic journals such as the American Economic Review and the Review of Economics and Statistics, and in multiple peer-reviewed and specialty journals. They have been reprinted throughout the world, and translated into Chinese, Japanese, Korean, Spanish, Italian, and Danish. He has taught IP law to federal and state judges at numerous Federal Judicial Center and ABA programs, has testified eight times before Congress, and has filed more than 50 amicus briefs in the U.S. Supreme Court, the California Supreme Court, and the federal circuit courts.
Mark is a founding partner of Durie Tangri LLP. He litigates and counsels clients in all areas of intellectual property, antitrust, and internet law. He has argued 27 federal appellate cases and numerous district court cases as well as before the California Supreme Court. He has participated in more than three dozen cases in the United States Supreme Court as counsel or amici. His client base is diverse, including Genentech, Dykes on Bikes, artists, and nearly every significant Internet company.
Mark is a founder of Lex Machina, Inc., a startup company that provides litigation data and analytics to law firms, companies, courts, and policymakers. Lex Machina was acquired by Lexis in December 2015.
Mark has been named California Lawyer’s Attorney of the Year twice. He received the California State Bar’s inaugural IP Vanguard Award. He won the 2018 World Technology Award for Law. In 2017 he received the P.J. Federico Award from the Patent and Trademark Office Society. Back when he was young, he was named a Young Global Leader by the Davos World Economic Forum and Berkeley Law School’s Young Alumnus of the Year. He has been recognized as one of the top 50 litigators in the country under 45 and one of the 25 most influential people in IP by American Lawyer, one of the 100 most influential lawyers in the nation by the National Law Journal, and one of the 10 most admired attorneys in IP by IP360. He is a member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, the American Law Institute, and the IP Hall of Fame.
Mark clerked for Judge Dorothy Nelson on the United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit and has practiced law in Silicon Valley with Brown & Bain and with Fish & Richardson and in San Francisco with Keker & Van Nest. He has previously held faculty positions at Berkeley Law School and the University of Texas School of Law. In his spare time, Mark enjoys cooking, travel, yoga, and feeding his addiction to video games (at this writing, Borderlands 3).
Education
- BA (with distinction) Stanford University 1988
- JD University of California Berkeley School of Law (Boalt Hall) 1991
Related Organizations
Courses
- Directed Research
- Discussion (1L): Robot Ethics
- Discussion: The Ethical Robot
- Externship, Special Circumstances
- Intellectual Property and Antitrust Law
- Intellectual Property: Patents
- Intellectual Property: Trademark and Unfair Competition Law
- Intermediary Liability
- Introduction to Intellectual Property
- Policy Practicum: Empirical Study of Patent Troll Litigation
- Policy Practicum: Intermediary Liability
- Remedies
- SPILS Masters Thesis
- TGR: Dissertation
- Video Game Law
Affiliations & Honors
- Advisor (2004-Present), Principles of the Law of Software Contracts Project, American Law Institute
- Arbitrator (1999-2001), Domain Name Disputes, Internet Corporation For Assigned Names and Numbers
- Chair, Association of American Law Schools Section on Law and Computers, 1997
- Master, San Francisco Bay Area Intellectual Property Inns of Court
- Member (2004-Present), Advisory Board, Electronic Frontier Foundation
- Member (2000-Present), Northern District of California Working Committee on Model Patent Jury Instructions
- Member (1995-Present), Panel of Academic Advisors, American Committee for Interoperable Systems
- Member (1995-1999), Board of Directors, University Cooperative Society
- Member (1994-2000), Board of Editors, American Intellectual Property Law Association Quarterly Journal
- Member, American Intellectual Property Law Association and American Law and Economics Association
- Moderator, "CyberProf" Internet listserv
- Honoree, World Economic Forum Young Global Leader, 2007
- Honoree, American Lawyer’s Young Litigators Fab Fifty, 2007
- Recipient, Best Lawyers in America, 2007 (IP, antitrust)
- Honoree, National Law Journal's "100 Most Influential Lawyers," 2006
- Recipient, California Lawyer’s Attorney of the Year (CLAY) Award, 2005
- Honoree, Lawdragon 500: New Stars, New Worlds, 2006
- Honoree, Lawdragon Leading Lawyers in America, 2005, 2006
- Honoree, Daily Journal 100 Most Influential Attorneys in California, 2004, 2005, 2006
- Honoree, San Francisco Magazine, Northern California Super Lawyers (IP litigation), 2004, 2005, 2006
- Honoree, Marquis Who’s Who in America, 2004, 2005, 2006, 2007
- Finalist, World Technology Network’s World Technology Award for Law, 2004
- Honoree, Daily Journal Top 25 Intellectual Property Attorneys in California, 2003
- Recipient, Young Alumnus of the Year, UC Berkeley School of Law (Boalt Hall), 2002
- Recipient, Order of the Coif, UC Berkeley School of Law (Boalt Hall)
- Recipient, Thelen Marrin Prize, UC Berkeley School of Law (Boalt Hall)
- Recipient, John G. Sobieski Prize in Economics, Stanford University, 1988
Policy Practicums
Featured Videos
Faculty on Point | Professor Mark Lemley on the Patent System
Faculty on Point | Professor Mark Lemley on Patent “Trolls”
Key Works
News
Google v. Oracle: Will Software Be Free?
The National Law Review
Referred to as “the copyright case of the century,”1 the Supreme Court could determine the fate of software protection in Google v. Oracle, namely that of Java. At its core, the case asks whether software programmers may copy functional names present in software code (known as a software interface; e.g.,…
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