Professor Llewellyn Joseph Gibbons, a faculty member since 1998, is a graduate of Northeastern University School of Law (JD), and Temple University School of Law (LLM).
At Toledo Law, Gibbons teaches Antitrust, Copyright, Cyberlaw, Ecommerce, Intellectual Property Licensing & Management, Intellectual Property Survey, Online Dispute Resolution (ODR), Secured Transactions, Torts, and Trademark law.
Professor Gibbons’ areas of research include both international and domestic intellectual property law, online dispute resolution, intellectual property licensing and management, technology transfer, ecommerce, and cyber-law.
Professor Gibbons is responsible for coordinating the College of Law’s certificate program in Intellectual Property Law, the joint Juris Doctor/Masters in Engineering, and other joint degree programs involving the sciences.
Professor Gibbons was appointed to the rank of a Distinguished University Professor effective July 1, 2017. A Distinguished University Professor is the highest permanent honor the University of Toledo can bestow on a faculty member. Those named Distinguished University Professor by The University of Toledo Board of Trustees have earned national or international recognition and distinction for their educational, artistic or scholarly contributions that have been transformative in their field.
Nationally, Professor Gibbons is actively involved with legal education and law reform. He is an elected member of the American Law Institute (ALI) and a Fellow of the American Bar Foundation; in 2010, he was the Chair of the American Association of Law Schools (AALS) Section on Minority Groups; and he has served on the AALS Minority Groups Section’s Executive Committee since 2006. He has also served as a secretary or executive board member for several AALS sections, and is a past-president of the Central States Association of Law Schools. Professor Gibbons publishes widely and is frequently in the top 10% for Social Science Research Network (SSRN) downloads. Several of his articles have been cited by federal or state courts.
Internationally, Professor Gibbons is a recognized scholar. In 2017, Zhongnan University of Economics and Law (ZUEL) (Wuhan, China) named Professor Gibbons a Wenlan Scholar Chair of Law. The Wenlan Scholar Chair is a three-year chaired professorship. ZUEL awards this honor to internationally recognized scholars with a high level of achievement in their fields who are also full-time faculty at internationally recognized institutions outside China or Chinese faculty at National Key Universities, and it is one of the highest levels of recognition of scholarly and professional achievement granted by ZUEL. ZUEL is a National Key University, and it is one of the top 10 specialist finance, economic and juristic universities in China. He has spoken at conferences or presented papers in countries such as Argentina, China, Hong Kong (SAR, China), Italy, Finland, Lithuania, and Switzerland. In spring 2006 and again in spring 2007, Professor Gibbons was honored to be selected as a Fulbright Scholar. He was assigned to Zhongnan University of Economics and Law (ZUEL) in Wuhan China. Zhongnan University of Economics and Law is the home of the “national center” for study of intellectual property rights. He is currently a fellow of the Center for the Study of Intellectual Property Rights (ZUEL). He is also a Fellow of the Salzburg Seminar, and a former Abraham L. Freedman Fellow, Temple University School of Law, and a former Junior Fellow, University of Toledo Humanities Center.
Professor Gibbons has been a visiting professor at Michigan State College of Law, Zhongnan University of Law and Economics (ZUEL), Beijing Foreign Studies University, and China University of Political Science and Law. Professor Gibbons has also taught in the U.S. Law program at the University of Szeged (Szeged, Hungary) and the University of Silesia (Katowice, Poland).
Professor Gibbons was a panelist for e-Resolution; one of the original four ICANN then recognized Internet domain name dispute resolution services. Prior to joining the faculty, Professor Gibbons was an Adjunct Professor at Franklin Pierce, an Assistant Professor at the University of Orlando, and a Lecturer-in-Law at Temple University School of Law. Professor Gibbons also was a Court Law Clerk for the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit and a Law Clerk for the Massachusetts Teachers Association.
Significant Publications
Mastering Trademark Law, (Carolina Academic Press, Spring 2013) (coauthor Lars S. Smith)
Regulatory Approaches: Crisis, Danger or Opportunity for Copyright and Trademark Law in the United States (book chapter, Reader in American Law for Chinese Law Students, Peking Univ. Press (Beijing) scheduled for publication 2012).
Crowdsourcing A Trademark: What The Public Giveth, The Courts May Taketh Away, 35 Hastings Comm. & Ent. L.J. ___ (2013).
Love’s Labor’s Lost: Marry for Love, Copyright Work Made-for-Hire, and Alienate at your Leisure, 101 Ky L.J. 113 (2012).
Do as I Say (Not as I Did): Putative Intellectual Property Lessons for Emerging Economies from the Not So Long Past of the Developed Nations, 64 SMU Law Rev. 923 (2011).
Visual Artist Rights Act and the Protection of Digital Works of “Photographic” Art?, 11 N.C. J. of L. & Tech. 531 (2010) (originally presented at a symposium).
Technology Transfer: Enough is Never Enough, 48 U. Louisville L. Rev. 843 (2010) (originally presented at a symposium)
Law and the Emotive Avatar, 11 Vand. J. Ent. & Tech. L. 899 (2009) (originally presented at a symposium)
Essay: China's Future Lawyers: Some Differences in Education and Outlook, 7 Asper Rev. Int'l Bus. & Trade L. 293 (2007), co-authors: Patricia Ross McCubbin, Malinda L. Seymore, and Andrea Curcio.
Trademarking the Immoral and Scandalous: Section 2(a) of the Lanham Act (book chapter, Intellectual Property Wealth: Issues and Practices in a Digital Age (Praeger 2007).
Semiotics of the Scandalous and the Immoral: Trademark Law Post Lawrence v. Texas, 2 Marquette I.P. L.J. 187 (2005).
Digital Bowdlerizing: Removing the Naughty Bytes, 2005 MICH . St. L. Rev. 167 (2005).
Entrepreneurial Fair Use: Let the Independent Contractor Stand in the Shoes of the User, 57 Ark. L. Rev. 539 (2004).
It’s Nobody’s Business, but You Still Cannot Lie About it: Criminalizing Innocent Attempts to Maintain Cyber-privacy, 30 Ohio N. L. Rev. 377 (2004 ) (originally presented at a symposium).
Stop Mucking up Copyright Law: A Federal Common Law of Contract as a Clean Exit Strategy, 34 Rutgers LJ 959 (2004).
Teaching Intellectual Property Licensing Transactionally, 34 U. Tol. L. Rev. 717 (2003) (transcript of remarks made at AALS Contract Section panel meeting).
A Market Incentive Solution to Regulating the Playing Field: Judicial Deference, Judicial Review, Due Process, and Fair Play in Online Consumer Arbitration, 23 NW J. Int’l L & Bus. 1 (2002) (originally presented at a conference ).
Napster: The Case of the Missing Direct Infringer, 9 Vill. Sports & Ent. L.J. 57 (2002) (originally presented at a symposium).
Cyber-Mediation: Computer-Mediated Communications Medium Massaging the Message, 32 N.M. L. Rev. 27 (2002), with Robin M. Kennedy and Jon M. Gibbs.
Resolving E-Commerce Disputes, B2B, and B2C: An Introduction to Some Online Dispute Resolution Modalities in ADR & the Law 342 (18th ed. 2001).
Private Law, Public “Justice”: Another Look at Privacy, Arbitration, and Global Ecommerce, 15 Ohio St. J. on Disp. Resol. 769 (2000) (originally presented at a symposium).
Cyberspace Law, Rieko Ibaraki, ed., Tokyo: Nippon Hyoron-sha Co., Ltd. 2000, chapter, Online ADR in the United States, (published in Japanese).
Rusticum Judicium? Private “Courts” Enforcing Private Law and Public Rights: Regulating Virtual Arbitration in Cyberspace, 23 Ohio-Northern L. Rev. 769 (1998) (originally presented at a symposium).
No Regulation, Government Regulation, or Self-Regulation: Social Enforcement or Social Contracting for Governance in Cyberspace, 6 Cornell J.L. & Pub. Pol'y 475 (1997) (originally presented at a symposium).
Protecting the Rights of Linguistic Minorities: Challenges to Court Interpretation, 30 New Eng. L. Rev. 227 (1996), with Charles M. Grabau.
Significant Presentations
2011 Annual Meeting of Ohio Regional Association of Law Libraries, Cincinnati, OH presented Excellence in the Library Begins With…Copyright Law?, October 21, 2011.
Franklin Pierce Intellectual Property Center, University of New Hampshire, Concord, NH, Inaugural Intellectual Property Academic Conference, presented What’s Love Got to Do With Intellectual Property: Marriage is Really Just a Partnership by Another Name, September 30, 2011.
Drake University School of Law, Des Monies, IA, Intellectual Property Scholars Roundtable, presentedHoisting the Jolly Roger and Lowering Intellectual Property Protectionism in Developing Countries, April 4-5, 2010.
The Association for the Study of Law, Culture and the Humanities 2011 Annual Conference, Las Vegas, NV, presented We Have Met the Enemy, and It is the U.S.: Copyright Owners are Their Own Worst Enemy, March 11-12, 2011.
The North Carolina Journal of Law & Technology Symposium Honoring Laura N. Gasaway, presentation on Staid Courts, New Media Art, Visual Artist Rights Act and the Protection of Digital Works of “Photographic” Art? , March 19, 2010.
International Association for the Advancement of Teaching and Research in Intellectual Property (ATRIP) presented IP Management by Universities, Bayh-Dole Act, 30 Years of Lessons, September 13, 2009.
University of Louisville, Brandeis School of Law, participated on a panel on University Tech Transfer, Over-reaching, and Killing the Goose that Laid the Golden Egg, at the Second Annual Conference in Innovation and Communications Law Program,, August 21-22, 2009.
South China University of Technology, Intellectual Property School and the Law School, Guangzhou, China, 2009 International Workshop on the Copyright Industries and Intellectual Property(CIIP’09), presented Family Home Movie Act: Stumbling along towards TRIPS Non-Compliance, June 15, 2009.
University of Hong Kong, Journalism and Media Studies Centre, The Age of Digital Convergence: An East-West Dialogue on Law, Media and Technology, participated on a panel on Indecency, Pornography and Content Control and TRIPS, June 12-13, 2009.
2009 IPR Nanhu Forum - National IPR Strategy Implementing Measures and Performance Evaluation ( Guangzhou, China), presented Evaluating of Whether Practical Measures of IPR Contributes to Economic Development is Possible, May 8-10, 2009.
Drake University School of Law, Des Moines, IA, 2009 Intellectual Property Scholars Roundtable, discussant International and Competition Law Panel, Feb. 27-28, 2009.
Vanderbilt University School of Law, The Vanderbilt Journal of Entertainment and Technology Law, Virtual Worlds, Social Networks and User-Generated Content Symposium, presented Legal Justifications for Protecting Emotive Avatars, Nov. 7-9, 2008.
University of Turku, Finland, Conference on Innovation and Communications Law, presented The Economic Valuation of Fair Use and other Forms of Excused Infringement, July 17-18, 2008.
City University of Hong Kong’s 2008 Student Leadership Conference, keynote speaker on Technology in a Flat World.
Zhongnan University of Economics and Law, Wuhan, China, presented on the economic significance of intellectual property “fair use” provisions as a development issue at the 2008 Nanhu International Conference on “Implementing IPR Stratagem and Perfecting IPR System.”
The George Washington University Law School, Second National People of Color Legal Scholarship Conference, America, Race, and the Law at Crossroads, panel presentation, Is there a Place for Race in Cyberspace?, October 7-10, 2004.
American Association of Law Schools, Conference on Commercial Law at the Crossroads,panel presentation on “Private Law Making,” June 16, 2005.
American Association of Law Schools, Art Law Section, panel presentation Trademarks: The New Semiotic Iconography of Individualization, January 8, 2005.
The Law and Society Association, discussant and chair, Privacy, Information, and Speech, May 29, 2004 and panel presentation, Digital Information, May 28, 2004.
American Bar Association Section of Dispute Resolution, panel presentation on Perspectives on Race and ADR from Law Professors of Color and Teachers of Dispute Resolution, April 16, 2004.
Ohio Northern University School of Law, Ohio Northern University Law Review Symposium, “Privacy & Surveillance: Emerging Legal Issues,” presentation It’s Nobody’s Business, but You Still Cannot Lie About It: Criminalizing Innocent Attempts to Maintain Cyber-privacy, March 18-19, 2004.
The Law and Society Association, panel presentation on Copyrights, Databases, and the Ebb and Flow of Information and Creativity, June 7, 2003 and The Flow of Information and the Electronic Rivers of Cyberspace, June 5, 2003.
American Association of Law Schools, Contract Law Section, panel presentation Intellectual Property Licensing in the Context of Teaching Contracts Transactionally, January 5, 2003.
Law and Society Association, panel moderator on Challenges to the First-Generation Rational Actor Account of Law and Social Norm, May 29, 2002.
The Johns Hopkins University School of Advanced International Studies and George Mason University, New Technologies and International Governance Conference, panel presentation on Internet Governance: The Emergence of Internet Common Law in B-to-C Commerce, February 12, 2002.
Villanova University School of Law, Villanova Sports & Entertainment Law Journal, Symposium: Napster: Innocent Innovation or Egregious Infringement, March 10, 2001.
Wayne State University Law School, Wayne Law Review, Computer Law Section and the Antitrust Law Section of the Michigan State Bar,Symposium: Unfairness and the Internet, commentator on the Fairness of Shrink-wrap Licenses panel, April 13, 2000.
American Association of Law Schools, Mini-Workshop on the Impact of Technology on Law and Legal Culture, panel presentation on the Internationalization of Law via Technology, January 6, 2000.
Ohio State University Moritz College of Law, The Ohio State Journal on Dispute Resolution, ADR in Cyberspace, 2000 and Beyond: A Symposium Taking ADR into the Technological Future, panel presentation on Privacy on the Internet, November 11, 1999.
Ohio Northern University College of Law, Ohio Northern University Law Review 21st Annual Symposium, Regulation of Transactions on the Internet: What Can and Should be done?, presentation entitled Rusticum Judicium? Private “Courts” Enforcing Private Law and Public Rights: Regulating Virtual Arbitration in Cyberspace, April 17, 1998.
Cornell University School of Law, Cornell Journal of Law and Public Policy 1996 Symposium, Regulating Cyberspace: Is Censorship Sensible? panel presentations on “Regulation of the Internet: Arguments for and against Government Regulation, Self-Regulation, or No Regulation” and “First Amendment, Privacy, and the Internet: Legal Issues Surrounding the Internet,” April 12-13, 1996.