bio

Fellow in Residence Elizabeth Rader earned her law degree, cum laude, from the University of Minnesota Law School.  She did her undergraduate work at Simon's Rock and Bryn Mawr College.  After law school she clerked for Alvin A. Schall, Circuit Judge of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit and for Leonie M. Brinkema, Judge of the United States District Court for the Eastern District of Virginia.  She joins the CIS with substantial litigation experience including a wide range of intellectual property and First Amendment cases in federal court.  She also counselled technology clients concerning intellectual property rights, privacy and other aspects of Internet law.  While in private practice, Ms. Rader did pro bono work including representing Scientology critic Keith Henson in his Ninth Circuit appeal of a copyright infringement verdict and helping local cities to enforce their cable franchise rights with respect to carriage of public access television stations.  With the CIS, Ms. Rader is working on behalf of webcasters challenging the Librarian of Congress’s order setting prohibitively high performance royalty rates for webcasting.  Most recently she has been representing Open Source Yoga Unity, an organization of yoga instructors challenging the claims of Yogi Bikram Choudhury that he can copyright a yoga routine and sue other yoga instructors for teaching it.  She also works on the Center’s cases defending authors' fair use rights and ability to build on the public domain, such as Somma v. Great Ormond Street Hospital and Lawrence Lessig's cases challenging the Copyright Term Extension Act.