Faculty & Administration View All

Mark P. McKenna

Professor of Law

Office Number: 3120 Eck Hall of Law
Telephone: 574.631.9258
Fax: 574.631.4197
Email: markmckenna@nd.edu
Staff Assistant: Lu Ann Nate

Mark P. McKenna teaches and writes in the area of intellectual property. Professor McKenna is widely recognized as a leading scholar in the trademark area, having published a number of articles in leading law journals on the topic of trademark law. He has also written about copyright law, the right of publicity, and the intersection of intellectual property rights regimes. Some of his latest projects deal with concerns about intergenerational equity in intellectual property and the role of the placebo effect in intellectual property policy.

Professor McKenna joined the Notre Dame Law School faculty on a permanent basis in the Fall of 2008 after visiting for a semester in the Spring of 2008. Prior to joining the faculty, Professor McKenna was a member of the faculty at Saint Louis University School of Law and practiced law with an intellectual property firm in Chicago, where he primarily litigated trademark and copyright cases. He graduated from the University of Notre Dame in 1997 with a degree in Economics and earned his J.D. from the University of Virginia School of Law in 2000.

In addition to various intellectual property courses, Professor McKenna teaches the first year Torts class and has previously taught Civil Procedure.

In the News

LAW60901, Torts

LAW70134, Intellectual Property Survey

LAW70128, Copyright

LAW70137, Trademarks & Unfair Competition

Faculty Expertise Areas

Teaching Interests:
Copyright Law
Design Patents
Intellectual Property Survey
Torts
Trademarks and Unfair Competition

Research Interests:
Copyright Law
Intellectual Property
Marketing & Advertising
Right of Publicity
Trademarks

Books

THE LAW OF INTELLECTUAL PROPERTY (with David Barnes, Craig Nard, and Michael Madison) (Aspen Law & Business, Third Edition forthcoming 2011).

Law Review Articles

A Consumer Decision-Making Model of Trademark Law, 97 VIRGINIA LAW REVIEW _
(forthcoming 2012).

Undefined Markets in IP Cases, 100 GEORGETOWN LAW JOURNAL _ (forthcoming 2012) (with Mark A. Lemley) (invited contribution to 100th Anniversary Volume)

Owning Mark(et)s, 109 MICH. L. REV. 137 (2010) (with Mark A. Lemley)

Irrelevant Confusion, 62 STAN. L. REV. 413 (2010) (with Mark A. Lemley).

Testing Modern Trademark Law’s Theory of Harm, 95 IOWA L. REV. 63 (2009).

Trademark Use and the Problem of Source, 2009 U. ILL. L. REV. 773 (2009).

The Normative Foundations of Trademark Law, 82 NOTRE DAME L. REV. 1839 (2007); reprinted at 97 TRADEMARK REP. 1126 (2007).

The Right of Publicity and Autonomous Self-Definition, 67 U. PITT. L. REV. 225 (2005).

Book Chapters and Symposium Contributions

(Dys)functionality, 48 HOUSTON LAW REVIEW (forthcoming 2012) (invited contribution to University of Houston Law Center Institute for Intellectual Property & Information Law Santa Fe Conference, Trademark: Today and Tomorrow)

Trademark Law’s Faux Federalism, in INTELLECTUAL PROPERTY AND THE COMMON LAW (Cambridge University Press, forthcoming 2012) (invited contribution to University of Pennsylvania Law School symposium on Intellectual Property and the Common Law)

Probabilistic Knowledge of Third-Party Trademark Infringement, 2011 STANFORD TECHNOLOGY LAW JOURNAL _ (forthcoming) (invited contribution to symposium on Secondary and Intermediary Liability on the Internet)

Intergenerational Progress, 2011 WISC. L. REV. 123 (with Brett Frischmann) (invited contribution to Wisconsin Law Review symposium on Intergenerational Equity and Intellectual Property)

Back to the Future: Rediscovering Equitable Discretion in Trademark Cases, 14 LEWIS & CLARK L. REV. 537 (2010) (invited contribution to Business Law Forum on Intellection Property Remedies)

An Alternate Approach to Channeling?, 51 WM. & MARY L. REV. 873 (2009) (invited contribution to conference on The Boundaries of Intellectual Property);

Teaching Trademark Theory Through the Lens of Distinctiveness, 52 ST. LOUIS U. L.J. 843 (2008) (contribution to annual teaching edition)

What’s the Frequency Kenneth? Channeling Doctrines in Trademark Law, in INTELLECTUAL PROPERTY AND INFORMATION WEALTH (Peter Yu, ed., Praeger Press 2007)

Intellectual Property, Privatization and Democracy: A Response to Professor Rose, 50 ST. LOUIS U. L.J. 829 (2006) (invited contribution to Childress Lecture program)

The Rehnquist Court and the Groundwork for Greater First Amendment Scrutiny of Intellectual Property, 21 WASH. U. J.L. & POL’Y 11 (2006) (invited contribution to conference on The Rehnquist Court and the First Amendment)

Works-in-Progress

The Placebo Effect in Intellectual Property (with Christopher Sprigman)

Shortsightedness in IP (with Brett Frischmann) (work-in-progress)

Trademark Defenses that Aren’t (with Bill McGeveran) (work-in-progress)

An Empirical Study of Federal False Advertising Cases (work-in-progress) (with Deborah Gerhardt and Kevin McGuire)

Other Writing

Lead Author, Brief of Amici Curiae Intellectual Property Law Professors in Support of Appellant, Board of Trustees of the University of Alabama v. New Life Art, et al. (11th Circuit 2010)