James Grimmelmann

I’m a professor at Cornell Law School and Cornell Tech, where I direct CTRL-ALT, the Cornell Tech Research Lab in Applied Law and Technology.

I study how laws regulating software affect freedom, wealth, and power. I try to help lawyers and technologists understand each other. My research interests include search engines, digital copyright, online governance, content moderation, and other topics in computer and Internet law.

I tweet @jtlg@mastodon.lawprofs.org and blog at The Laboratorium.

I am working on a book, CPU, Esq.: How Lawyers and Coders Do Things with Words, which explores the linguistic parallels between software and legal texts. Sign up for updates.

Current Teaching

Intellectual Property (Fall 2023)
Digital Property (Spring 2024)
Content Moderation and Platform Regulation (Spring 2024)

Recent Writings

Talkin’ ‘Bout AI Generation: Copyright and the Generative AI Supply Chain (with Katherine Lee and A. Feder Cooper) (draft 2023)
Internet Law: Cases and Problems (13th ed. 2023)
Words of Wisdom, Jotwell: Technology Law (June 2023), reviewing Samuel R. Bowman, Eight Things to Know About Large Language Models
Content Moderation on End-to-End Encrypted Systems: A Legal Analysis, Georgetown Law Technology Journal (forthcoming) (with Charles Duan)
The Structure and Legal Interpretation of Computer Programs, 1 Journal of Cross-Disciplinary Research in Computational Law no. 3, art. 19 (2023)
An Economic Model of Intermediary Liability, Berkeley Technology Law Journal (forthcoming) (with Pengfei Zhang)

Resources

I have written three inexpensive casebooks: Internet Law: Cases and Problems, Patterns of Information Law (IP), and Open Source Property (with four colleagues).

I maintain some lists of IP/tech resources for scholars and students:

Contact

Cornell Tech
2 West Loop Road
New York, NY 10044
james.grimmelmann@cornell.edu
he/him/his

Here is my disclosure statement.