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Brenda Simon

Brenda Simon

ProFlowers Professor of Internet Studies
Professor of Law

Phone
(619) 525-1463
Department
Faculty

Biography

Professor Simon’s research interests focus on how technological developments affect intellectual property and information law. She has published articles in both scientific journals and traditional law reviews, including the Northwestern University Law Review, Houston Law Review, Case Western Reserve Law Review, Brooklyn Law Review, Nature Biotechnology, Science, and the Stanford Journal of Law, Science & Policy, among others. One of her publications was selected as among the year’s best law review articles related to intellectual property and republished in Intellectual Property Law Review

Professor Simon has taught courses related to intellectual property law, real property, and information law at Stanford Law School, Thomas Jefferson, and in the Rady School of Management at the University of California, San Diego. She has been honored to receive multiple teaching awards from her students while teaching property and patent law.

Previously, Professor Simon was the teaching fellow for the Law, Science and Technology LL.M. Program at Stanford Law School, and a research fellow in the Stanford Center for Law and the Biosciences. She is also the recipient of an Edison Innovation Fellowship. She practiced intellectual property law for several years with Fenwick & West in the Silicon Valley, where she represented technology clients in litigation, counseling, and patent prosecution. Professor Simon’s pro bono representation of clients included successful appeals on behalf of inmates before the Ninth and Federal Circuits. Before working in private practice, she served as a law clerk to Judge Mariana R. Pfaelzer of the U.S. District Court for the Central District of California.

  • JD, University of California, Berkeley School of Law
  • BS, University of California, Los Angeles [summa cum laude, Chemistry]
  • Patent Law
  • Law & Ethics of Big Data
  • Property I
  • Property II

Please visit Professor Simon’s SSRN page.

  • Using Artificial Intelligence in the Law Review Submissions Process, 56 UC Davis Law Review __ (forthcoming 2022), available here.
  • Preserving the Fruits of Labor: Impediments to University Inventor Mobility, 89 Tennessee Law Review 1 (2021)
  • Patents, Information, and Innovation, 85 Brooklyn L. Rev. 727 (2020)
  • The Pathologies of Data-Generating Patents, in Big Data, Health Law, and Bioethics (I. Glenn Cohen et al., eds., Cambridge University Press, 2018) (with Ted Sichelman)
  • Fostering Reproducibility in Industry-Academia Research, 357 Science 759 (2017) (with B.R. Jasny, N. Wigginton, et al.)
  • Data-Generating Patents, 111 Northwestern Univ. L. Rev. 377 (2017) (with Ted Sichelman) (first author)
  • Preventing the Potential Perils Associated with Automated Pre-Examination Search, 2 Berkeley Technology Law Journal Commentaries (2016)
  • Rules, Standards, and the Reality of Obviousness, 65 Case W. Res. L. Rev. 25 (2014)
  • The Implications of Technological Advancement for Obviousness, 19 Mich. Telecomm. & Tech. L. Rev. 331 (2013)
  • Patent Cover-Up, 47 Hous. L. Rev. 1299 (2011)
  • Unsettled expectations: how recent patent decisions affect biotech, 29 Nature Biotech. 229 (2011) (with Christopher Thomas Scott) (first author)
  • Pluripotent patents make prime time: an analysis of the emerging landscape. 28 Nature Biotech. 557 (2010) (with Charles E. Murdoch and Christopher Thomas Scott) (first author)
  • Misuse Made Plain: Evaluating Concerns about Neuroscience in National Security, Peer Commentary, 1 Am. J. Bioethics-Neuroscience 15 (2010) (with multiple authors)
  • How to Get a Fair Share:  IP Policies for Publicly Supported Biobanks, 1 Stan. J. L. Science & Pol’y 65 (2009)