Professor Depoorter is a frequent visiting professor at Berkeley Law, teaching in the LL.M.’s Professional Track. He is also the Max Radin Distinguished Professor at University of California, Hastings College of the Law, EMLE coordinator at CASLE Ghent University, and Affiliate Scholar at Stanford Law School’s Center for Internet at Society.
Copyright law is one of his major areas of expertise, where Depoorter has investigated a variety of questions relating to enforcement of intellectual property law in the digital era, including whether and how fees-shifting can be used to align incentives between authors in way that promote creativity, how punitive approaches to copyright law adversely impact copyright social norms, and how automated enforcement measures create false positives.
Litigation theory is Depoorter’s other major area of expertise, where he has investigated the strategic pursuit of losing litigation by interest groups that seek to mobilize public and political support, examined the feedback effect of tort settlements on legal precedent, and described the shaping effect of legal uncertainty and court delay.
Recent publications include “When the Remedy is the Wrong: Statutory Damages in the Digital Age”, UCLA Law Review (2019); “The Upside of Losing”, “Fair Trespass”, Columbia Law Review (2014, 2011); “Using Fee Shifting to Promote Fair Use and Fair Licensing”, California Law Review (2015); “Copyright Backlash”, Southern California Law Review (2011); “Law in the Shadow Bargaining: The Feedback Effect of Civil Settlements”, Cornell Law Review (2010); “Technology & Uncertainty: The Shaping Effect on Copyright Law”, the University of Pennsylvania Law Review (2010), and “Liquidated Damages and Moral Hazard: An Experiment”, JITE (2016). His interdisciplinary work on anticommons property is widely cited in American law reviews and international peer-reviewed journals and was featured in a 2010 issue of the New Yorker.
Professor Ben Depoorter completed his studies at Yale Law School (2003, 2009) on a full scholarship from the BAEF. As an Oscar Cox and Olin Fellow at Yale, Depoorter served as an editor of the Yale J. Reg. He was a Santander Research Fellow at U.C. Berkeley and a recipient of a Fulbright scholarship.
Before becoming a law professor, Depoorter toured with his indierock band and released several LP records.
Education
J.S.D., Yale Law School (2011)
LL.M., Yale Law School (2003)
Ph.D., Ghent University (2003)
M.A., University of Hamburg (1999)
J.D., Ghent University School of Law (1998)
Ben W Depoorter is not teaching any Law courses in Fall 2024.
Courses During Other Semesters
| Semester | Course Num | Course Title |  Teaching Evaluations | Summer 2025 | 278.3S sec. 001 | Copyright Law | Summer 2024 | 278.3S sec. 001 | Copyright Law | View Teaching Evaluation | Summer 2023 | 278.3S sec. 001 | Copyright Law | View Teaching Evaluation |
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