Academics
Academics
About IP Director
About the Director
Peter K. Yu, the inaugural holder of the Kern Family Chair in Intellectual Property Law, serves as the director of the Intellectual Property Law Center. A leading expert in international intellectual property and communications law, Yu is the author, editor or co-editor of three books and more than 60 law review articles and book chapters. His recent publications include a four-volume reference book set entitled Intellectual Property and Information Wealth: Issues and Practices in the Digital Age (Praeger Publishers 2007). He is the general editor of The WIPO Journal and sits on the editorial boards of the Journal of Copyright Society of the U.S.A. and the Journal of World Intellectual Property. He has been in charge of media law projects funded by USAID, IREX and the European Commission.
Born and raised in Hong Kong, Yu is a Wenlan Scholar Chair Professor at Zhongnan University of Economics and Law in Wuhan, China and serves as a visiting professor at the University of Hong Kong Faculty of Law in the summers. He has spoken at events organized by the World Intellectual Property Organization, the International Telecommunication Union, the U.N. Conference on Trade and Development (UNCTAD), the U.N. Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO), the Chinese, EU and U.S. governments, as well as leading research institutions from around the world. His lectures and presentations have spanned more than 15 countries on five continents, and his publications have been translated into Chinese, Japanese and Portuguese. He is a frequent commentator in the national and international media.
Before joining Drake University, Yu taught at Michigan State University College of Law and founded its nationally ranked intellectual property and communications law program. He was also a member of the core faculty of the Asian Studies Center and held courtesy appointments in the Department of Telecommunication, Information Studies and Media at Michigan State University. In 2007, he received both the Student Bar Association’s Distinguished Faculty Award and the university-wide MSU Teacher-Scholar Award.
He received his J.D. from Benjamin N. Cardozo School of Law at Yeshiva University, where he taught immediately after graduating from law school and served as the first executive director of its nationally-renowned intellectual property law program. He was also a research associate of the Programme in Comparative Media Law and Policy at the University of Oxford. He holds a B.A. in English and political science from the University of Wisconsin-Madison.
To see his profile in The Des Moines Register click here.
