J.D., Yale Law School, 2007
M.Phil., University of Oxford, 2005
B.C.L., University of Oxford, 2004
B.A., LL.B. (Hons.), National Law School of India University, 2003
Common Law
Copyright Law
Jurisprudence
Private Law Theory
Shyam Balganesh writes and teaches in the areas of copyright law, intellectual property, and legal theory. He has written extensively on understanding how intellectual property and innovation policy can benefit from the use of ideas, concepts, and structures from different areas of the common law, especially private law. His recent work explores the interaction between copyright law and key institutional features of the American legal system. He is also working on a series of articles advancing an account of “legal internalism” that explains the shape and trajectory of legal thinking. Balganesh’s work has appeared in leading law journals, including the Columbia Law Review, Harvard Law Review, Stanford Law Review, University of Pennsylvania Law Review, and Yale Law Journal. He is also a co-author of sections of the leading copyright law treatise Nimmer on Copyright.
Before joining the Columbia Law School faculty in 2021, Balganesh was a professor of law and co-director of the Center for Technology, Innovation and Competition at the University of Pennsylvania Carey Law School. Prior to that, he was a Bigelow Fellow at the University of Chicago Law School. He received a J.D. from Yale Law School, where he was an articles and essays editor of the Yale Law Journal and a student fellow at the Information Society Project. Prior to that, he spent two years as a Rhodes Scholar at Balliol College, Oxford, where he received a B.C.L. and M.Phil.
In 2017, he was elected a member of the American Law Institute, and since 2015 he has served as an adviser to the Restatement of the Law, Copyright. Balganesh also has been recognized for his teaching: In 2017, he received the Robert A. Gorman Award for Excellence in Teaching and, in 2015, the A. Leo Levin Award for Excellence in an Introductory Course, both at the University of Pennsylvania Law School.
While copyright law is ordinarily thought to consist primarily of exclusive rights, the regime's various exemptions and immunities from liability for copyright infringement form an integral part of its functioning, and serve to balance copyright's grant of a private benefit to authors/creators with the broader public interest. With contributors from all over the world, this handbook, edited by Balganesh; Ng-Loy Wee Loon, National University of Singapore School of Law; and Haochen Sun, University of Hong Kong Faculty of Law, offers a systematic, thorough study of copyright limitations and exceptions adopted in major jurisdictions, including the United States, the European Union, and China. In addition to providing justifications for these limitations, the chapters compare differences and similarities that exist in major jurisdictions and offer suggestions about how to improve the enforcement of copyright limitations domestically and globally.
An expert in intellectual property and legal theory, Balganesh addresses debates in creativity and innovation from the “monkey selfie” to protecting privacy through copyright.