CIS Speakers Series - Sonia Katyal

February 23, 2012 12:50 pm to 2:00 pm

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Contrabrand: Art, Advertising and Property in the Age of Corporate Identity

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.

Professor Sonia K. Katyal, the Joseph M. McLaughlin Professor of Law at Fordham Law School, teaches in the areas of intellectual property, property, and civil rights.  Her articles have appeared in the Yale Law Journal, Penn Law Review, UCLA Law Review, and the Washington Law Review, among others, and have garnered numerous awards, including an honorable mention in the 2006 AALS Scholarly Papers Competition, a Cybercrime Award from the Yale Journal of Law and Technology, and a Dukeminier award from the Williams project at UCLA. In addition, another 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.

Her most recent book, Property Outlaws: How Squatters, Pirates and Protesters Improve the Law of Ownership, (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. 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 (formerly also 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.

 

Photo by Victoria Pickering.

Location: 
Stanford Law School, Room 280B
559 Nathan Abbott Way
Stanford, CA

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