Jessica Litman

John F. Nickoll Professor of Law

Course Webpages:

• Law 633: Copyright (Fall 2025)
• Law 827: Intellectual Property Workshop (Fall 2025)(with Becky Eisenberg)
• Law 666: Music Copyright (Winter 2024)
• Law 874: Seminar in Advanced Copyright Topics: Fair Use (Winter 2024) (with Jack Bernard)
• Law 760: Trademarks and Unfair Competition (Fall 2023)
• Law 741.002 Problem Solving Initiative: New Music Business Models (Winter 2019)(with Jeremy Peters)
• Law 820: IP Law and Policy: The Future of Publishing (Winter 2018) (with Paul Courant)
• Introduction to United States Copyright Law (University of Tokyo, Summer 2017)

• Law 580: Torts (Fall 2016)
• Law 874: Seminar in Advanced Copyright Topics (Fall 2016)
• Law 897: Seminar in the Law in Cyberspace (Fall 2013)
• SI 519/ PubPol 688: Intellectual Property and Information Law (Fall 2010)

Recent Work:

• Edward S. Rogers, the Lanham Act, and the Common Law, RESEARCH HANDBOOK ON THE HISTORY OF TRADEMARK LAW (Robert G. Bone & Lionel Bentley, eds., 2024)


• Keynote Address, Symposium: Diamond Anniversary: 75 Years of the Lanham Act, 39 CARDOZO ARTS & ENTERTAINMENT L.J. 855 (2021)


• Testimony on The Digital Millennium Copyright Act at 22 before the Senate Judiciary Committee Subcommitee on Intellectual Property (February 11, 2020)


• Imaginary Bottles, 18 Duke L. & Tech. Rev. 127 (2019)


• What We Don’t See When We See Copyright As Property, 77 Cambridge L.J. 536 (2018)


• Before and After the Copyright Wars [webcast archive], David Lange Lecture in Intellectual Property, Duke Law School, October 4, 2018


• Fetishizing Copies, in RUTH OKEDIJI, COPYRIGHT IN AN AGE OF LIMITATIONS AND EXCEPTIONS 107 (2017)


• What Notice Did, 96 Boston University Law Review 717 (2016)


• Campbell at 21/Sony at 31, 90 Washington L. Rev. 651 (2015)


• Silent Similarity, 14 Chicago-Kent J. Intellectual Property 11 (2015)


• Antibiotic Resistance, 30 Cardozo Arts & Entertainment L.J. 53 (2012)


• Readers’ Copyright, 58 J. Copyright Society of the USA 325 (2011)


• The Invention of Common Law Play Right, 25 Berkeley Technology L.J. 1381 (2011)


• Real Copyright Reform, 96 Iowa Law Rev. 1 (2010)


• The Politics Of Intellectual Property, 27 Cardozo Arts & Entertainment L.J. 313 (2009)


• The Copyright Revision Act of 2026, 13 Marquette Intellectual Property L. Rev. 249 (2009)


• Billowing White Goo, 31 Columbia J. L. & the Arts 587 (2008)


• Creative Reading, Symposium: Cultural Environmentalism @ 10, 70 Law & Contemporary Problems 175 (2007)


• Lawful Personal Use, 85 Texas L. Rev. 1871 (2007)


• Copyright Liberties [webcast archive], Duke Law School Center for the Study of the Public Domain Information Ecology Lecture, March 30, 2007


• The Economics of Open Access Law Publishing, 10 Lewis & Clark L. Rev. 779 (2006)


• The Story of Sony v. Universal Studios: Mary Poppins Meets the Boston Strangler,  in Jane. C. Ginsburg & Rochelle C. Dreyfuss, INTELLECTUAL PROPERTY STORIES (2005)


• War and Peace:  The 34th Annual Donald C. Brace Lecture (April 14, 2005) 53  Journal of the Copyright Society of the USA 1 (2006)


• The Sony Paradox, 55 Case Western Reserve L. Rev.917  (2005)


• Sharing and Stealing, 26 COMM/ENT 1 (2004)


• War Stories, 20 Cardozo Arts & Entertainment Law Journal 337 (2002)


• Duke Law School Conference on the Public Domain Webcast Archive:  The History and Theory of the Public Domain -- From Cheap Books to the Comedy of the Commons (Nov. 9, 2001)


• Information Privacy/Information Property, 52 Stanford L. Rev. 1283 (2000)


• The DNS Wars: Trademarks and the Internet Domain Name System, 4 J. Small & Emerging Bus. L. 149 (2000)


• The Demonization of Piracy (Address to the Tenth Conference on Computers, Freedom & Privacy, April 6, 2000)


• Breakfast with Batman: The Public Interest in the Advertising Age, 108 Yale L.J. 1717 (1999)


• Electronic Commerce and Free Speech, 1 J. Ethics and Information Technology 213 (1999)


• Digital Copyright and Information Policy, Kraig M. Hill et. al., GLOBALIZATION OF INTELLECTUAL PROPERTY IN THE 21ST CENTURY: EUROPE, ASIA AND THE INTERNET 299 (CASRIP Publication Series Number 5 1999)


• The Tales that Article 2B Tells, 13 Berkeley Technology L. J. 935 (1998)


• Reforming Information Law in Copyright's Image, 22 U. Dayton L. Rev. 587 (1997): html or pdf.


• Copyright Noncompliance (or why we can't "Just say yes" to licensing), 29 New York University J. Intl L. & Policy 237 (1997): html or pdf.


• New Copyright Paradigms in Laura A. Gassaway, GROWING PAINS 63 (1997).


• Revising Copyright for the Information Age, 75 Oregon L. Rev. 19 (1996): html or pdf.


• The Exclusive Right to Read, 13 Cardozo Arts & Ent. L.J. 29 (1994): html or pdf.

• Brief Amici Curiae of 53 Intellectual Property Law Professors in Eldred v. Ashcroft (Written with Jon Weinberg and Dennis Karjala)
• Brief Amici Curiae of 21 Copyright Law Professors in Eldred v. Ashcroft (written with Jon Weinberg, Dennis Karjala, Lolly Gassaway & Jessica Golzynski)
• Brief Amicus Curiae of Copyright Law Professors in A&M v. Napster

Send me an email message: jdlitman at umich.edu