Upcoming Event: Tuesday, January 14, 2025 at 6:15 p.m. PT at Del Frisco's Double Eagle Steakhouse Copyright Wrapped 2024’s Greatest Hits What better way to kick off a new copyright year than by reviewing the last one? Professor Tyler Ochoa of Santa Clara Law School will present the important copyright cases of 2024, including the Supreme Court’s decision Warner Chappell Music v. Nealy and Court of Appeals and District Court opinions concerning originality in music, blank forms, and legal instruments; idea-expression in software and modern art; copying of tattoos in videogames; secondary liability of internet service providers; recent developments in AI litigation; fair use; termination of transfers; and the geographic scope of the U.S. Copyright Act.
Professor Ochoa is a co-author (with Craig Joyce and Michael Carroll) of Copyright Law (Carolina Academic Press 12th ed. forthcoming 2025), a leading copyright casebook; a co-author (with Shubha Ghosh and Mary LaFrance) of Understanding Intellectual Property Law (LexisNexis 4th ed. 2020), a student hornbook; the sole author (former co-author, with the late Howard Abrams) of annual updates to The Law of Copyright (West 2024), a comprehensive treatise; and a co-author of Celebrity Rights: Rights of Publicity in the United States and Abroad (Carolina Academic Press 2d ed. forthcoming 2026). His article, Patent and Copyright Term Extension and the Constitution: A Historical Perspective, 49 J. Copyr. Soc’y U.S.A. 19 (2001), was cited by the U.S. Supreme Court in Eldred v. Ashcroft, 537 U.S. 186 (2003). He has published numerous academic articles, and he has filed many amicus briefs in copyright cases, including some that have been cited and relied on by the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit. In addition to his other accomplishments, Prof. Ochoa was a two-time champion on the TV game show Jeopardy!, and a champion on the TV game show Win Ben Stein’s Money. | 2024-2025 OFFICERS & TRUSTEES President Dan Nabel President-Elect Ian Slotin Vice President Jacqueline Charlesworth Treasurer Secretary Joshua Geller Greenberg Glusker Fields Claman & Machtinger Trustees Robert S. Gutierrez Barbara Quinn Emily Weiss Samantha Kantor Sony Pictures EntertainmentJef Pearlman Andrew Sullivan Xiyin Tang Joel Weiner
Vivian S. Lee |
Tyler T. Ochoa is a Professor with the High Tech Law Institute at Santa Clara University School of Law in Santa Clara, California. He received an A.B. degree from Stanford University, with distinction, in 1983 and a J.D. degree from Stanford Law School, with distinction, in 1987. In 1987-88, he was a clerk for the Hon. Cecil F. Poole of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit. From 1988-1993, he was an associate with the law firm of Brown & Bain, in Palo Alto, California, where he specialized in copyright and trade secret litigation involving computer software. Prior to joining the faculty at Santa Clara, he was a Professor and Co-Director of the Center for Intellectual Property Law at Whittier Law School in Costa Mesa, California.