Pamela Samuelson

Pamela Samuelson is the Richard M. Sherman Distinguished Professor of Law at the University of California, Berkeley School of Law, where she has been a faculty member since 1996. She is a leading expert in copyright law, internet law, and privacy with extensive contributions to the field of intellectual property as it intersects with emerging technologies.

Her research interests span copyright law, internet law, privacy law, intellectual property law, technology and society, and digital rights. Professor Samuelson has written and spoken extensively about the challenges that new information technologies pose for traditional legal regimes, particularly in the realm of intellectual property. Her recent work has focused on the intersection of artificial intelligence and copyright law, including questions about whether ingesting copyrighted works as training data constitutes infringement and whether AI outputs can be considered infringing derivative works.

Professor Samuelson serves as Chair of the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) board and has been instrumental in fostering civil liberties on the internet. She has also been involved in significant legal cases, including providing amicus briefs in the Google copyright case that supported the fair use defense. Her scholarly work has directly influenced important copyright litigation, including the Oracle v Google software copyright case that reached the Supreme Court.

• Member of the American Academy of Arts & Sciences
• Fellow of the Association for Computing Machinery (ACM)
• Contributing editor of Communications of the ACM
• Past fellow of the John D. & Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation
• Member of the American Law Institute
• Honorary professor of the University of Amsterdam
• Chair of the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) board

Professor Samuelson has advised on numerous technology policy issues and has been a vocal advocate for balanced copyright approaches that support both creators and innovators. Her work bridges the gap between legal scholarship and practical technology policy, making significant contributions to how society understands and regulates digital technologies and intellectual property in the 21st century.