Brett Frischmann

Brett Frischmann joins Villanova as The Charles Widger Endowed University Professor in Law, Business and Economics, effective August 1, 2017. In this new role, Professor Frischmann will promote cross-campus research, programming and collaboration; foster high-visibility academic pursuits at the national and international levels; have the ability to teach across the University; and position Villanova as a thought leader and innovator at the intersection of law, business and economics.

A renowned scholar in intellectual property and Internet law, Professor Frischmann comes to Villanova from Cardozo Law School at Yeshiva University, where he was director of the Cardozo Intellectual Property and Information Law Program (2011-2016) and a Professor of Law. He is an affiliated scholar of the Center for Internet and Society at Stanford Law School, and a trustee for the Nexa Center for Internet & Society, Politecnico di Torino. Professor Frischmann most recently served as the Microsoft Visiting Professor of Information and Technology Policy at Princeton University’s Center for Information and Technology Policy.

Professor Frischmann’s work has appeared in leading scholarly publications, including Columbia Law Review, Cornell Law Review, Journal of Institutional Economics, Journal of Economic Perspectives, University of Chicago Law Review, and Review of Law and Economics, among others. His forthcoming book co-authored with philosopher Evan Selinger, Being Human in the 21st Century: How Social and Technological Tools are Reshaping Humanity (Cambridge University Press), will examine techno-social engineering of humans, various ‘creep’ phenomena and modern techno-driven Taylorism. Professor Frischmann’s books on the relationships between infrastructural resources, governance, commons and spillovers include Infrastructure: The Social Value of Shared Resources (Oxford University Press, 2012); Governing Knowledge Commons (Oxford University Press, 2014, with Michael Madison and Katherine Strandburg); and Governing Medical Knowledge Commons (Cambridge University Press, forthcoming 2017, with Michael Madison and Katherine Strandburg).

Prior to his appointment at Cardozo Law, Professor Frischmann was on the faculty of the Loyola University Chicago, School of Law from 2002 to 2010. He also has served as a visiting professor at numerous institutions, including Columbia Law School, Cornell Law School, Duke Law School, Fordham University School of Law and Syracuse University College of Law.