Douglas Lichtman

Professor of Law
Faculty Director, Ziffren Institute for Media, Entertainment, Technology and Sports Law

  • B.S.E. Duke University, 1994
  • J.D. Yale, 1997
  • UCLA Faculty Since 2007

Doug Lichtman focuses his teaching and research on topics relating to law and technology.  His areas of specialty include patent and copyright law, telecommunications regulation, and information strategy and economics.

Professor Lichtman joined the faculty at UCLA School of Law in 2007 after a tenured teaching career at the University of Chicago.  His work has been featured in numerous journals including the Journal of Law & Economics, the Journal of Legal Studies, the Yale Law Journal, and the Harvard Business Review. He co-authored Telecommunications Law and Policy, a textbook that investigates the federal regulatory regime applicable to broadcast television, cable television, radio, telephony, and the Internet. He also regularly writes in the popular press, with recent pieces appearing in the Los Angeles Times and the policy magazine Regulation.

Bibliography

  • Books
    • Telecommunications Law and Policy (with Stuart Benjamin, Howard Shelanski & Philip Weiser). 2nd ed. Carolina Academic Press (2006). Previous edition: 1st, 2001.
  • Articles And Chapters
    • Naughty Bits: An Empirical Study of What Consumers Would Mute and Excise from Hollywood Fare if Only They Could (with Benjamin Nyblade), Journal of the Copyright Society of the U.S.A. (forthcoming 2019).
    • Google Book Search in the Gridlock Economy, 53 Arizona Law Review 151 (2011). Full Text
    • Understanding the RAND Commitment, 47 Houston Law Review 1023 (2010). Full Text
    • Copyright as Information Policy: Google Book Search from a Law and Economics Perspective, in 9 Innovation Policy and the Economy, (edited by Josh Lerner & Scott Stern, NBER, 2008). Full Text
    • Rethinking Patent Law’s Presumption of Validity (with Mark Lemley), 60 Stanford Law Review 45 (2007). Full Text
    • Irreparable Benefits, 116 Yale Law Journal 1284 (2007). Full Text
    • Holding Internet Service Providers Accountable (with Eric Posner), in The Law and Economics of Cybersecurity, (edited by Mark Grady & Francesco Parisi, Cambridge University Press, 2006). Edited version published in Regulation Magazine 54 (January/February 2005). Republished in 14 Supreme Court Economic Review 221 (2006). Full Text
    • Patent Holdouts and the Standard-Setting Process, University of Chicago Law and Economics, Olin Working Paper No. 292 (May 2006). Substantially revised version in Perspectives on the Law and Economics of Commercialization Innovation (edited by Scott Kieff & Troy Paredes, Cambridge University Press, 2011). Full Text
    • What to do about Bad Patents (with Mark Lemley & Bhaven Sampat), 28 Regulation Magazine (Winter 2005). Reprinted in I P Law & Business (December 2005). Full Text
    • Substitutes for the Doctrine of Equivalents, 93 Georgetown Law Journal 2013 (2005). Full Text
    • How the Law Responds to Self-Help, 1 Journal of Law, Economics, and Policy 215 (2005). Full Text. Excerpt in the University of Chicago Record (Spring 2005) under the title, Captive Audiences and the First Amendment; republished in essay form as, Defusing DRM, IP Law & Business (February 2006).
    • Rethinking Prosecution History Estoppel, 71 University of Chicago Law Review 151 (2004). Full Text
    • Indirect Liability for Copyright Infringement: An Economic Perspective (with William Landes), 17 Journal of Economic Perspectives 113 (2003). Expanded version published as, Indirect Liability for Copyright Infringement: An Economic Perspective, 16 Harvard Journal of Law & Technology 395 (2003).  Reprinted internationally in law journals in India, China, and elsewhere. Full Text
    • Copyright as a Rule of Evidence, 52 Duke Law Journal 683 (2003). Excerpt published in the University of Chicago Magazine (Winter 2003), reprinted in the Intellectual Property Law Review (West 2004). Full Text
    • Uncertainty and the Standard for Preliminary Relief, 70 University of Chicago Law Review 197 (2003). Full Text
    • Entry Policy in Local Telecommunications: Iowa Utilities and Verizon (with Randal Picker), Supreme Court Review 41 (2002). Full Text
    • Strategic Disclosure in the Patent System (with Scott Baker & Kate Kraus), 53 Vanderbilt Law Review 2175 (2000). Full Text
    • Property Rights in Emerging Platform Technologies, 29 Journal of Legal Studies 615 (2000). Reprinted in The Internet Upheaval (MIT Press, 2002) and Foundations In Intellectual Property Law (Foundation Press, 2004). Full Text
    • Shared Information Goods (with Yannis Bakos and Erik Brynjolfsson), 42 Journal of Law and Economics 117 (1999). Featured in the Harvard Business Review 23-25 (July/August 1999). Full Text
    • Pricing Prozac: Why the Government Should Subsidize the Purchase of Patented Pharmaceuticals, 11 Harvard Journal of Law & Technology 123 (1997).
    • The Economics of Innovation: Protecting Unpatentable Goods, 81 Minnesota Law Review 693 (1997).
    • The Deliberative Lottery: A Thought Experiment in Jury Reform, 34 American Criminal Law Review 133 (1996).
  • Other
    • The Case Against YouTube, Los Angeles Times A19 (March 20, 2007).
    • Brief of Kenneth J. Arrow, Ian Ayres, Gary Becker, William M. Landes, Steven Levitt, Douglas Lichtman, Kevin Murphy, Randal Picker, Andrew Rosenfield, and Steven Shavell, as Amici Curiae in Support of Petitioners, MGM Studios, Inc. v. Grokster Ltd., No. 04-480 (U.S. Sup. Ct., filed January 24, 2005).
    • KaZaA and Punishment, The Wall Street Journal (September 9, 2003).
    • Anonymity a Double-Edged Sword for Pirates Online (with David Jacobson), Chicago Tribune (April 13, 2000).