Jessica Litman

Jessica Litman is an American expert on copyright law and author of Digital Copyright:Protecting Intellectual Property on the Internet (2001), which traces the history of lobbying that led to the passage of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act.[1][2][3] It has been called a "classic text".[1] Litman has been called a "leading intellectual property scholar."[4]

Jessica Litman and her son Ari Litman-Weinberg

Litman was raised in Pittsburgh and graduated from Reed College, received an MFA from Southern Methodist University, and received a JD from Columbia Law School.[5][2]

She is currently John F. Nickoll Professor of Law at the University of Michigan Law School,[6][7] after having been professor of law at Wayne State University Law School from 1990 to 2006 and University of Michigan Law from 1984 to 1990.[6][5] Her original appointment to the faculty was only the fourth by Michigan Law of a woman.[8]

Litman has testified before Congress and served on multiple governmental and legal boards, including the Copyright Society of the USA, the Advisory Board of Public Knowledge, the Intellectual Property and Internet Committee of the ACLU, and the National Research Council's Committee on Partnerships in Weather and Climate Services. In 2018 she delivered the David L. Lange Lecture in Intellectual Property at Duke Law.[6] The Christian Science Monitor consulted and quoted her for their coverage of the monkey selfie copyright dispute.[9]

Litman coauthored with Jane Ginsburg and Mary Lou Kevlin the casebook "Trademarks and Unfair Competition Law: Cases and Materials."[6]

Her brother, Harry Litman, is a lawyer, law professor, and political commentator.[2] Her mother, Roslyn Litman, was adjunct faculty and a member of the Board of Visitors at University of Pittsburgh Law School and in 2008 was named a Distinguished Alumni Fellow.[2]