Sonia Katyal '98 Appointed the Joseph M. McLaughlin Professor of Law at Fordham University School of Law

Sonia Katyal has been appointed the Joseph M. McLaughlin Professor of Law, following the retirement of Maria Marcus.

“I am delighted to recognize Professor Katyal’s exemplary scholarship with this appointment,” said Fordham Law Dean Michael M. Martin. “Our School’s intellectual property program is immeasurably enriched by her award-winning work focused on the intersection of art, technology, and civil rights.”

Katyal’s articles have been published in prominent legal publications, including the Texas Law Review, the University of Pennsylvania Law Review, the UCLA Law Review, and the Yale Law Journal. They also have garnered multiple awards, including an honorable mention in the 2006 American Association of Law Schools Scholarly Papers Competition, the 2004 Cybercrime Award from the Yale Journal of Law and Technology, the 2002 Dukeminier award from the Williams project at UCLA. In addition, her article “Stealth Marketing and Antibranding: The Love that Dare Not Speak Its Name” was selected as one of the best articles in media and entertainment law for 2010 and will be included in the 2011 Entertainment Publishing and the Arts Handbook (West).

Her most recent book, Property Outlaws (Yale University Press, 2010), co-authored with Eduardo Peñalver, explores, in part, how changes in new media alter the balance between law, technology, and property entitlements. Her forthcoming book, Contrabrand (Yale University Press, 2012), studies the relationship between trademark law, advertising, freedom of artistic expression, and brand equity. It was funded in part by The Creative Capital/Warhol Foundation Arts Writers Grant—the first such grant ever awarded to a law professor. Two other book projects include a casebook on cultural property (co-authored with Angela Riley and Kristen Carpenter, to be published by Aspen) and a handbook on law and art (coauthored with Christine Farley, to be published by Elgar Press).

Katyal joined Fordham Law in 2002 after working as an associate specializing in intellectual property litigation in the San Francisco office of Covington & Burling. A graduate of Brown University and the University of Chicago Law School, she clerked for Hon. Carlos Moreno (later a California Supreme Court Justice) of the Central District of California from 1998 to 1999 and for Hon. Dorothy Nelson of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit from 1999 to 2000.