Professor Katyal teaches in the areas of intellectual property, property and civil rights at Fordham Law School. Before coming to Fordham, Professor Katyal was an associate specializing in intellectual property litigation in the San Francisco office of Covington & Burling.
She received her A.B. from Brown University in 1993, and her J.D. from the University of Chicago Law School in 1998.
After law school, Prof. Katyal clerked for the Honorable Carlos Moreno (now a California Supreme Court Justice) in the Central District of California from 1998-99 and the Honorable Dorothy Nelson in the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit from 1999-2000.
Prof. Katyal's scholarly work focuses on intellectual property, civil rights (including gender and sexuality), and new media. Her current projects study the relationship between copyright enforcement and privacy (as applied to peer-to-peer technology); and the impact of artistic expression and parody on corporate identity, advertising, and brand equity. She also works on issues relating to intellectual property and indigenous people's rights, with a special focus on cultural property in the United States and abroad.
Katyal is also the winner of four awards for her scholarly work: her paper, "Exporting Identity," received a Dukeminier Award in 2002; in 2004, another paper, "The New Surveillance," won the Yale Cybercrime Award.
Her most recent paper, "Semiotic Disobedience," was awarded an Honorable Mention in the 2006 Scholarly Papers Competition by the American Association of Law Schools, and was profiled in the New York Times Magazine.
In March of 2008, Katyal was awarded a grant from the Warhol Foundation for her book, Contrabrand, which studies the relationship between art, advertising and intellectual property. Katyal is the first law professor to receive a grant through The Creative Capital/ Warhol Foundation Arts Writers Grant, a program created to support independent, progressive arts publications and individual arts writers.
In her spare time, Professor Katyal enjoys pop culture, unauthorized derivative works, anything Bollywood-related, and spending time with her little pomeranian, Chika.
Her book (co-authored with Eduardo M. Penalver), Property Outlaws, is out this February 2010 from Yale University Press.
Sonia Katyal - Contrabrand: Art, Advertising and Property in the Age of Corporate Identity (Audio)
March 7, 2012
Stanford Center for Internet and Society Speakers Series Talk - Read more » about Sonia Katyal - Contrabrand: Art, Advertising and Property in the Age of Corporate Identity (Audio)
Sonia Katyal - Contrabrand: Art, Advertising and Property in the Age of Corporate Identity (Video)
March 7, 2012
In her talk, based on her forthcoming book from Yale Press, Contrabrand: Art, Advertising and Property in the Age of Corporate Identity, Sonia Katyal will discuss the intersection of art, commercial speech, and trademark law within the First Amendment, and will show how the law has shifted in response to the constitutional challenges the branding movement has created. In her talk, Katyal will focus on the "antibranding" movement in popular art and culture, which she defines to include the expressive activities of artists and activists who direct their energies towards challenging corporate branding. The greatest threat to cultural and artistic freedom, she argues, stems not from the pervasive power of the government, but instead from the powerful reach of corporate branding over artistic and consumer response. Read more » about Sonia Katyal - Contrabrand: Art, Advertising and Property in the Age of Corporate Identity (Video)