Dan Burk

Picture of Dan Burk
Chancellor's Professor
School of Law
M.S., Northwestern University, 1985, Molecular Biology and Biochemistry
J.D., Arizona State University, 1990
J.S.M., Stanford University, 1994
Phone: (949) 824-9325
Fax: (949) 824-7336
Email: dburk@uci.edu
University of California, Irvine
401 East Peltason Drive
Mail Code: 8000
Irvine, CA 92697
Research Interests
law, intellectual property, patent, copyright, trademark, Internet law, biotechnology law
Academic Distinctions
2011 Fulbright Scholar (Germany)

2015 Leverhulme Visiting Professor (London School of Economics)

2017 Fulbright Cybersecurity Scholar (United Kingdom)

2019 Senior Visiting Fellow, Weizenbaum Institute for the Networked Society (Berlin)
Research Abstract
Professor Dan L. Burk is an internationally prominent authority on the law of intellectual property, who specializes in the areas of cyberlaw and biotechnology. He is the author of numerous papers on the legal and societal impact of new technologies, including articles on scientific misconduct, on the regulation of biotechnology, and on the intellectual property implications of global computer networks. Burk’s scholarship has been characterized by an early recognition of key legal issues created by emerging technologies, followed by legal and policy analysis that has often defined the social discussion of the issues. He is consistently ranked among the most highly cited and influential intellectual property scholars in the United States.

Professor Burk is perhaps best known for his work in patents, where his monograph with Mark Lemley of Stanford University, The Patent Crisis and How the Courts Can Solve It, has provided a framework for discussion of patent institutional structure and patent reform. He is similarly well known for his pioneering analysis regarding jurisdiction or legal control over Internet activity, especially the proper role of state and federal government in regulation under the “commerce clause” of the United States constitution. Burk’s arguments were adopted by a number of federal courts reviewing state regulation of the Internet, and have been important in shaping the character of present Internet regulation. His analysis of legal claims regarding “trespass to computers” was similarly influential in defining the terms of the litigation, public discussion, and scholarly discourse surrounding such claims, and his critique of the issue was adopted in the landmark opinion of the California Supreme Court in Intel v. Hamidi.
Publications
THE PATENT CRISIS AND HOW THE COURTS CAN SOLVE It (U. Chicago Press, 2009) (with Mark A. Lemley) .
Patent Performativity, 29 J. INTEL. PROP. L. 280 (2022).
Calculative Patents, 99 TEXAS L. REV. ONLINE 183 (2021).
Algorithmic Legal Metrics, 96 NOTRE DAME L. REV. 1147 (2020).
Algorithmic Fair Use, 86 U. CHI. L. REV. 307 (2019).
Patents and the First Amendment, 95 WASH. U.L. REV. 197 (2018).
Patent Silences, 69 VAND. L. REV. 1603 (2016).
On the Sociology of Patenting, 101 MINN. L. REV. 421 (2016).
The Curious Incident of the Supreme Court in Myriad Genetics, 90 NOTRE DAME L. REV. 505 (2014).
Owning E-Sports: Proprietary Rights in Professional Computer Gaming, 161 U. PENN. L. REV. 1535 (2013).
Cybermarks, 94 MINN. L. REV. 1375 (2010).
Fence Posts or Sign Posts? Rethinking Patent Claim Constructon, 157 U. PENN. L. REV. 1743 (2009)(with Mark A. Lemley).
The Goldilocks Hypothesis: Balancing Intellectual Property Rights at the Boundary of the Firm, 2006 U. ILL. L. REV. 275 (with Brett H. McDonnell).
Intellectual Property and the Firm, 71 U. CHI. L. REV. 3 (2004).
Policy Levers in Patent Law, 79 VA. L. REV. 101 (2003)(with Mark A. Lemley).
Anti-Circumvention Misuse, 50 UCLA L. REV. 1095 (2003).
Patenting Speech, 79 TEXAS L. REV.100 (2000).
Professional Societies
Order of the Coif
American Law Institute
Other Experience
Oppenheimer, Wolff & Donnelly Professor of Law
University of Minnesota 1999—2008
Associate Professor of Law
Seton Hall University 1995—1999
Last updated
06/03/2022