FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
CHRISTOPHER J. BUCCAFUSCO, INTELLECTUAL PROPERTY SCHOLAR, TO JOIN CARDOZO’S IP FACULTY
June 3, 2015 – New York, NY – Dean-Elect Melanie Leslie has announced that Christopher J. Buccafusco will join Cardozo Law’s top intellectual property faculty as Professor of Law in the fall. Prior to joining Cardozo, he was a professor at IIT Chicago-Kent College of Law, where he co-directed the school's Center for Empirical Studies of Intellectual Property.
Professor Buccafusco's research applies social science methods to study legal problems, especially how the law affects creativity, innovation, and happiness. His work tests fundamental assumptions about how the intellectual property system functions. IP law attempts to affect people's creative behavior by offering them incentives to innovate, share, and use new works and inventions, but very little is known about whether these incentives actually work. Using novel creativity experiments, Professor Buccafusco's research has shown that creators often do not behave the way that IP law assumes they will. His studies have explored how different kinds of incentives affect creativity, how creators think about borrowing from others’ efforts, and how creators assign value to their innovations. The results of these studies challenge important aspects of IP law, and they suggest opportunities for improving the legal system and creative economies.
“Professor Buccafusco is a leading intellectual property professor, and we are excited to have him join the Cardozo Law faculty,” said Dean Melanie Leslie. “Our students will greatly benefit from his teaching and groundbreaking scholarship.”
Professor Buccasfusco’s book Happiness and the Law, which he co-authored, was recently published by the University of Chicago Press, and his law review articles have appeared in top journals including the Columbia Law Review, University of Chicago Law Review, Cornell Law Review, and Georgetown Law Journal.
He is teaming up with the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office and colleagues at Northwestern University to co-host the third annual Workshop on Empirical Studies of Intellectual Property in spring 2016. Professor Buccafusco, David Schwartz, and the PTO's Chief Economists founded the workshop two years ago. The workshop allows researchers from around the world to present early stage empirical projects so they can receive feedback before they begin collecting data. This enables them to refine their ideas and methods and to improve the value of the resulting data. Previous workshops have included participation by researchers from Harvard, the University of Chicago, the University of Pennsylvania, NYU, and MIT.
Professor Buccafusco studied legal history at the University of Chicago, and he received a law degree from the University of Georgia and a bachelor's degree from Georgia Tech.
For more information contact:
John DeNatale
Assistant Dean of Communications
212.790.0237
Jacqueline Reeves
Director, Media Relations and Communications
212.790.0837