Barton Beebe

(updated 2025-07-23)

I am the John M. Desmarais Professor of Intellectual Property Law at NYU School of Law, where I'm also a Co-Director of the Engelberg Center on Innovation Law & Policy and a Co-Director of the Competition, Innovation, and Information Law LLM Program.

I'm the author of Trademark Law: An Open-Access Casebook, a free law school textbook.

CV | Photo | barton.beebe@nyu.edu

Books

Trademark Law: An Open-Access Casebook (2014-2025)

Charting Limitations on Trademark Rights (Oxford, 2023) (with Haochen Sun)

The Luxury Economy and Intellectual Property: Critical Reflections (Oxford, 2015) (with Haochen Sun & Madhavi Sunder)

Trademark Law, Unfair Competition, and Business Torts (Aspen, 2011) (with Thomas Cotter, Mark Lemley, Peter Mennell & Robert Merges)

Articles

Automating Abercrombie: Machine-Learning Trademark Distinctiveness, 21 Journal of Empirical Legal Studies 826 (2024) (with Shivam Adarsh, Elliott Ash, Stefan Bechtold & Jeanne Fromer) (.pdf)

Consumer Uncertainty in Trademark Law: An Experimental Investigation, 72 Emory Law Journal (2023) (with Roy Germano, Christopher Jon Sprigman & Joel H. Steckel) (.pdf)

The Future of Trademarks in a Global Multilingual Economy: Evidence and Lessons from the European Union, 112 Trademark Reporter 902 (2022) (with Jeanne C. Fromer) (.pdf)

An Empirical Study of U.S. Copyright Fair Use Opinions Updated, 1978-2019, 10 New York University Journal of Intellectual Property & Entertainment Law 1 (2020) (.pdf)

Fake Trademark Specimens: An Empirical Study, 121 Columbia Law Review Forum 217 (2020) (with Jeanne Fromer) (.pdf)

Immoral or Scandalous Marks: An Empirical Analysis, 8 New York University Journal of Intellectual Property & Entertainment Law 169 (2019) (with Jeanne Fromer) (.pdf)

Testing for Trademark Dilution in Court and the Lab, 86 University of Chicago Law Review 611 (2019) (with Roy Germano, Christopher Jon Sprigman, & Joel Steckel) (.pdf) (reprinted in abridged form as The Science of Proving Trademark Dilution, 109 Trademark Reporter 955 (2019) (pdf))

Are We Running Out of Trademarks? An Empirical Study of Trademark Depletion and Congestion, 131 Harvard Law Review 945 (2018) (.pdf) (with Jeanne Fromer)

The Scope of Strong Marks: Should Trademark Law Protect the Strong More than the Weak? 92 New York University Law Review 1339 (2017) (with Scott Hemphill) (.pdf)

Bleistein, the Problem of Aesthetic Progress, and the Making of American Copyright Law, 117 Columbia Law Review 319 (2017) (.pdf)

Intellectual Property Law and the Sumptuary Code, 123 Harvard Law Review 809 (2010) (.pdf)

An Empirical Study of U.S. Copyright Fair Use Opinions, 1978-2005, 156 Pennsylvania Law Review 549 (2008) (.pdf) (data set in .xls)

An Empirical Study of the Multifactor Tests for Trademark Infringement, 95 California Law Review 1581 (2006) (.pdf) (data set and coding form in .xls)

Search and Persuasion in Trademark Law, 103 Michigan Law Review 2020 (2005) (.pdf)

The Semiotic Analysis of Trademark Law, 51 UCLA Law Review 621 (2004) (.pdf)

Chapters

The German Misappropriation Origins of Trademark Antidilution Doctrine: A Translation of the 1924 Odol Opinion of the Landgericht Elberfeld, Transition and Coherence in Intellectual Property Law: Essays in Honour of Annette Kur (Niklas Bruun, Graeme B. Dinwoodie, Marianne Levin & Ansgar Ohly eds., 2021) (.pdf)

The Problems of Trademark Depletion and Congestion: Some Possible Reforms, in Research Handbook on Trademark Law Reform 17 (Graeme B. Dinwoodie and Mark D. Janis, eds., Edward Elgar Publishing, 2021) (with Jeanne C. Fromer)

Empirical Studies of Trademark Law, Research Handbook on the Economics of Intellectual Property Law: Volume II. Analytical Methods (Peter Menell and David Schwartz, eds., 2019)(.pdf)

Design Protection Law, The Oxford Handbook of Intellectual Property Law (Rochelle Dreyfuss & Justine Pilla eds., 2017) (.pdf)

The Suppressed Misappropriation Origins of Trademark Antidilution Law: the Landgericht Elberfeld's Odol Opinion and Frank Schechter's The Rational Basis of Trademark Protection, Intellectual Property at the Edge: The Contested Contours of IP (Rochelle Dreyfuss & Jane Ginsburg eds, 2013) (.pdf)

Canada and United States of America, Study on Misappropriation of Signs 69 (Committee on Development and Intellectual Property, World Intellectual Property Organization, March 14, 2012, CHIP/9/INF/5)

The Semiotic Account of Trademark Doctrine and Trademark Culture, Trademark Law and Theory: A Handbook of Contemporary Research 42 (Graeme B. Dinwoodie & Mark D. Janis eds.) (Edward Elgar Publishers, 2008) (adapted from The Semiotic Analysis of Trademark Law, 51 UCLA Law Review 621) (.pdf)

Invited Lectures and Symposium Contributions

Less as More in Intellectual Property Law, 102 Boston University Law Review Online 61 (2022) (.pdf)

Intellectual Property Law and Post-Scarcity Society, [2019] Singapore Journal of Legal Studies 377 (.pdf)

What Trademark Law is Learning from the Right of Publicity, 42 Columbia Journal of Law & the Arts 389 (2019) (.pdf)

Star Athletica and the Problem of Panaestheticism, 9 UC Irvine Law Review 275 (2019) (.pdf)

Shanzhai, Sumptuary Law, and Intellectual Property Law in Contemporary China, 47 U.C. Davis Law Review 849 (2014) (.pdf)

Fair Use and Legal Futurism, 24 Law & Literature 10 (2013) (.pdf)

Tiffany and Rosetta Stone: Intermediary Liability in U.S. Trade Mark Law, 41 CIPA Journal 192 (2012)

Is the Trademark Office a Rubber Stamp?: Trademark Registration Rates at the PTO, 1981-2010, 48 Houston Law Review 752 (2012) (.pdf)

Does Judicial Ideology Affect Copyright Fair Use Outcomes?: Evidence From the Fair Use Case Law, 31 Columbia Journal of Law & the Arts 101 (2008) (.pdf)

The Continuing Debacle of U.S. Antidilution Law: Evidence from One Year of Trademark Dilution Revision Act Case Law, 24 Santa Clara Computer & High Technology Law Journal 449 (2008) (.pdf) (data set in .dta (Stata))

A Defense of the New Federal Trademark Antidilution Law, 17 Fordham Intellectual Property, Media & Entertainment Law Journal 1143 (2006) (.pdf)

Shorter Works

Clearing Up Some Confusion About Dilution: A Reply to Hal Poret, 112 Trademark Reporter 684 (2022) (.pdf)

Practitioner's Summary of Results Reported in An Empirical Study of U.S. Fair Use Opinions, 1978-2005, Practising Law Institute, Advanced Seminar on Copyright Law 2008, at 11, PLI Order No. 14793 (2008) (.pdf)

Reply to Alan Audi, A Semiotics of Cultural Property Argument, 14 International Journal of Cultural Property 156 (2007)

Parental Initiative in the Age of Signal Bleed, 109 Yale Law Journal 627 (1999) (.pdf)

Law's Empire and the Final Frontier: Legalizing the Future in the Early Corpus Juris Spatialis, 108 Yale Law Journal 1737 (1999) (.pdf)

Amicus Briefs

Brief for Professors Barton Beebe and Jeanne Fromer as Amici Curiae Supporting Respondent, Iancu v. Brunetti, 139 S. Ct. 2294 (2019) (cited in Iancu v. Brunetti, 139 S.Ct 2294, 2230 (2019)) (.pdf)

Congressional Testimony

Statement of Professors Barton Beebe and Jeanne Fromer, New York University School of Law, Before the United States Senate, Committee on the Judiciary, Subcommittee on Intellectual Property, Hearing on "Fraudulent Trademarks: How They Undermine the Trademark System and Harm American Consumers and Businesses," December 3, 2019 (link)

Statement of Professors Barton Beebe and Jeanne Fromer, New York University School of Law, Before the U.S. House of Representatives, Committee on the Judiciary Subcommittee on Courts, Intellectual Property, and the Internet, Hearing on "Counterfeits and Cluttering: Emerging Threats to the Integrity of the Trademark System and the Impact on American Consumers and Businesses," July 18, 2019 (.pdf)

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