University of Utah : S.J. Quinney College of Law

John Tehranian

Professor of Law

Professor Tehranian’s scholarship focuses on the interface between law and culture, with a particular focus on issues of technology, entertainment and race.  In particular, his work explores the impact of the emerging intellectual property and cyberlaw regimes on technological innovation and artistic creation; the growing tension between ownership of knowledge and expressive rights; the link between cultural formation, identity development and trademark, copyright and patent law; and the relationship between legal systems and racial identity. For example, in a recent series of articles appearing in the U.C. Davis Law Review and BYU Law Review, he examined the critical change in the theoretical underpinnings of our copyright regime and the development of the fair use doctrine, and then proposed a revised infringement test that would advance the goals of our intellectual property system while better protecting key First Amendment interests in the use of protected works. In other published works appearing in the Yale Law Journal and Indiana Law Journal, Tehranian has critiqued the role of the legal system in constructing racial identities and hierarchies as well as the adverse impact of these processes on the protection of critical civil rights and liberties.

Scholarship Highlights

Book Chapters

Optimizing Piracy: Achieving Efficient Management of Intellectual Property Portfolios, in Il Congreso Internacional de la Sociedad de la Informacion y el Conocimiento (CISIC) 2003 Annual Proceedings. New York: McGraw Hill (2003).

Famine and the Rule of Law: Freedom of the Press, Regime Consolidation and the Politics of Starvation. A Study of the 1982-1985 Droughts in Ethiopia, Kenya and Zimbabwe, in Not by Bread Alone: Food Security and Governance in Africa 145 (Ade Ogunrinade et al. eds., 1999).

Government Surnames and Legal Identifies, in National Identification Systems: Essays in Opposition 11 (Carl Water, ed., 2004) (co-author with James C. Scott and Jeremy Mathias)

Books

Whitewashed (forthcoming, 2008, NYU Press)

Legal Writing

An Unhurried View of Copyright Reform: Bridging the Law/Norm Gap, 2007 Utah Law Review __ (2007)

Compulsory Whiteness:  Towards a Middle Eastern Legal Scholarship, 82 Indiana Law Journal 1 (2007)

The Secret Life of Legal Doctrine: The Divergent Evolution of Secondary Liability in Trademark and Copyright Law, 21 Berkeley Technology Law Journal 1363 (2006) (co-authored with Mark Bartholomew)

Whither Copyright? Transformation, Free Speech and an Intermediate Liability Proposal 2005 B.Y.U. Law Review (2005).

Et Tu, Fair Use? The Triumph of Natural Law Copyright, 38 U.C. Davis Law Review 465 (2005).

Sanitizing Cyberspace: Obscenity, Miller and the Future of Public Discourse on the Internet, 11 Journal of Intellectual Property 1 (2003).

All Rights Reserved? Reassessing Copyright and Patent Enforcement in the Digital Age, 72 University of Cincinnati Law Review 45 (2003).

The Creation of Legal Identities Proper to the State: The Case of the Permanent Family Surname, 44 Comparative Studies in Society and History 1 (2002). (jointly authored with James C. Scott and Jeremy Mathias)

A New Segregation? Race, Rice v. Cayetano, and the Constitutionality of Hawaiian-Only Education and the Kamehameha Schools. 23 University of Hawai'i Law Review 109 (2000).

Performing Whiteness: Naturalization Litigation and the Construction of Racial Identity in America, 109 Yale Law Journal 817 (2000).

Miscellaneous

Aloha, Section 1981, Legal Times (June 16, 2006)

Copyright Liability After Grokster, California Lawyer 37 (Nov. 2005)