David W. Opderbeck
Associate Professor of Law
Professor Opderbeck’s work focuses on the regulation of access to scientific and technological information. His published work has employed the tools of game theory, classical microeconomics, and statistical analysis to address issues such as intellectual property restrictions on essential medicines in developing countries, open source biotechnology, patent damages reform, and the interaction of law and social norms concerning music file sharing.
In addition to his traditional legal scholarship, Professor Opderbeck is interested in the philosophical and moral foundations of information policy and other aspects of the law. He has written on a virtue ethics approach to biotechnology law, and most recently has explored the philosophical aspects of information policy in a groundbreaking essay that seeks to apply a critical realist approach to the ontology of information. He is a principal organizer of a conference on “Religious Legal Theory: State of the Art” that will be held at the Law School in 2009.
Professor Opderbeck graduated cum laude from Seton Hall Law School in 1991 and earned an LL.M. in Trade Regulation from New York University Law School in 1998. He previously was a Partner in the Intellectual Property / Trade Regulation group at McCarter & English, LLP, where he represented clients in the life sciences, consumer products, telecommunications, computer software, and other industries. Representative litigated cases include Wedeco UV Technologies, Inc. v. Calgon Corp, 2006 WL 1867201 (D.N.J. 2006); Bamberger v. Rohm & Hass Corp., 1998 WL 684263, 40 Fed.R.Serv.3d 667 (D.N.J. 1998); McCall v. Metropolitan Life Ins. Co., 956 F. Supp. 1172 (D.N.J. 1996).
Publications
Law Review Articles
Patent Damages and the Shape of Patent Law, 89 Boston University Law Review 127 (2009)
The Penguin’s Paradox: The Political Economy of International Intellectual Property and the Paradox of Open Source, 18 Stanford Law & Policy Rev. 101 (2007)
A Virtue Ethics Approach to the Biotechnology Commons (or, The Virtuous Penguin), 59 Maine Law Rev. 316 (2007)
Patents, Essential Medicines, and the Innovation Game, 8 Vanderbilt Law Review 501 (2005)
Law Journal Article
Peer-to-Peer Networks, Technological Darwinism, and Intellectual Property Reverse Private Attorney General Litigation, 20 Berkeley Technology Law J. 1 (2005)
The Penguin’s Genome, or Coase and Open Source Biotechnology, 18 Harvard Journal of Law and Technology 168 (2004)
Other Articles
Deconstructing Jefferson’s Candle: Towards a Critical Realist Approach to Cultural Environmentalism and Information Policy, 49 Jurimetrics ___ (2009, forthcoming)
Deconstructing Jefferson’s Candle: Towards a Critical Realist Approach to Cultural Environmentalism and Information Policy, 49 Jurimetrics ___ (2009, forthcoming)
Symposium, Preparing for a Pharmaceutical Response to Pandemic Flu, Seton Hall Law School, October 2008: “State Sovereignty, Flu Viruses, and Intellectual Property.” (October 2008)
Symposium, The Evolution of Life-Saving Drugs: The Open Source Model and Beyond, Temple Journal of Science, Technology and Environmental Law, Temple Law School, February 2006: “Challenges for Open Source Biotechnology.” (February 2006)