Skip to main content area Skip to institutional navigation Skip to search Skip to section navigation

Shyamkrishna Balganesh

Assistant Professor of Law

Shyamkrishna Balganesh

Shyam Balganesh’s scholarship focuses on understanding how intellectual property and innovation policy can benefit from the use of ideas, concepts and structures from different areas of private law. His most recent work examines the institution of coauthorship using the idea of shared intentionality, and argues that copyright law, despite its overall commitment to market-based utilitarianism, recognizes there to be situations where the very process of collaboration can provide creators with an inducement to create. Continue reading… Shyam Balganesh’s scholarship focuses on understanding how intellectual property and innovation policy can benefit from the use of ideas, concepts and structures from different areas of private law. His most recent work examines the institution of coauthorship using the idea of shared intentionality, and argues that copyright law, despite its overall commitment to market-based utilitarianism, recognizes there to be situations where the very process of collaboration can provide creators with an inducement to create. He is also working on a book that explores the origins, development, and uniqueness of Indian private law. While at Yale Law School, he was an Articles & Essays Editor of the Yale Law Journal and a Student Fellow at the Information Society Project (ISP). Prior to that he spent two years as a Rhodes Scholar at Balliol College, Oxford. Recent articles include "Copyright Infringement Markets," Columbia Law Review (2013), "Gandhi and Copyright Pragmatism," California Law Review (2013), “The Obligatory Structure of Copyright Law: Unbundling the Wrong of Copying,”Harvard Law Review (2012); “The Normativity of Copying in Copyright Law,” Duke Law Journal (2012); and “Quasi Property: Like, But Not Quite Property” University of Pennsylvania Law Review (2012), among others.

[Hide]

Expertise

  • Copyright
  • Property Law
  • Intellectual Property
  • Patent Law
  • Law and Technology

Articles and Book Chapters

Book Chapters

Alienability and Copyright Law, in CONCEPTS OF PROPERTY IN INTELLECTUAL PROPERTY 161 (Helena Howe & Jonathan Griffiths eds. 2013).

The Normative Structure of Copyright Law, in INTELLECTUAL PROPERTY AND THE COMMON LAW 313 (Shyam Balganesh ed. 2013).

The Role of Unfair Competition in the Common Law, in INTELLECTUAL PROPERTY AND THE COMMON LAW 484 (Shyam Balganesh ed. 2013) (with Gideon Parchomovsky).

Articles & Essays

Unplanned Coauthorship, 100 VA. L. REV. (forthcoming 2014).

Copyright Infringement Markets, 113 COLUM. L. REV. 2277 (2013).

Gandhi and Copyright Pragmatism, 101 CALIF. L. REV. 1705 (2013).

Stewarding the Common Law of Copyright, 61 J. COPYRIGHT SOC'Y U.S.A. 103 (2013).

The Uneasy Case Against Copyright Trolls, 86 S. CAL. L. REV. 723 (2013).

The Normativity of Copying in Copyright Law, 62 DUKE L.J. 203 (2012).

The Obligatory Structure of Copyright Law: Unbundling the Wrong of Copying, 125 HARV. L. REV. 1664 (2012).

Quasi-Property: Like, But Not Quite Property, 160 U. PA. L. REV. 1889 (2012).

The Uncertain Future of "Hot News" Misappropriation After Barclays Capital v. Theflyonthewall.com, 112 COLUM. L. REV. SIDEBAR 134 (2012).

"Hot News": The Enduring Myth of Property in News, 111 COLUM. L. REV. 419 (2011).

The Pragmatic Incrementalism of Common Law Intellectual Property, 63 VAND. L. REV. 1543 (2010).

Tiered Originality and the Dualism of Copyright Incentives, 95 VA. L. REV. IN BRIEF 67 (2009).

Foreseeability and Copyright Incentives, 122 HARV. L. REV. 1569 (2009).

Debunking Blackstonian Copyright, 118 YALE L.J. 1126 (2009).

Demystifying the Right to Exclude: Of Property, Inviolability, and Automatic Injunctions, 31 HARV. J L. & PUB. POL’Y 593 (2008).

The Social Costs of Property Rights in Broadcast (and Cable) Signals, 22 BERKELEY TECH. L.J. 1303 (2008).

Rethinking Copyright: Property Through the Lenses of Unjust Enrichment and Unfair Competition, 156 U. PA L. REV. PENNUMBRA 345 (2008).

Common Law Property Metaphors on the Internet: The Real Problem with the Doctrine of Cybertrespass, 12 MICH. TELECOMM. & TECH. L. REV. 265 (2006).

Property Along the Tort Spectrum: Trespass to Chattels and the Anglo-American Doctrinal Divergence, 35 COMMON L. WORLD REV. 135 (2006).

Copyright and Free Expression: Analyzing the Convergence of Conflicting Normative Frameworks, 4 CHI.-KENT J. INTELL. PROP. 45 (2004).

More publications can be found here.

Working Papers

Judging Similarity (March 10, 2014), 100 IOWA L. REV. __ (forthcoming 2014) (with Irina D. Manta & Tess Wilkinson-Ryan). (forthcoming 2014)
[View Document]

Codifying the Common Law of Property in India: Crystallization and Classification as Strategies of Constraint

Crowding Out the Normativity of Private Law: Lessons from India

Research Areas

  • Copyright Law
  • Intellectual Property Law
  • Property Law & Theory
  • Common Law Theory

Positions

Penn Law – Assistant Professor of Law (2009- )

University of Chicago Law School – Bigelow Fellow & Lecturer in Law (2007-09)

Law Clerk to Justice (later Chief Justice) V.N. Khare of the Supreme Court of India (Winter 2002)

World Bank - Legal Consultant (Summer 2005)

Union for the Public Domain (UPD), Washington, DC - Board Member and World Intellectual Property Organization Standing Committee on Copyright & Related Rights (WIPO-SCCR) Representative (2004- )

Cravath, Swaine & Moore LLP, New York – Summer Associate (2006)

Courses

  • Property Law
  • Copyright Law
  • Copyright Theory
  • Property Theory

⇱ Return to Top