David Levine
Professor of Law
Department: Elon University School of Law
Email: dlevine3@elon.edu
Phone number: (336) 279-9298
Professional Expertise
Brief Biography
Dave Levine is a Professor of Law at Elon University School of Law (Associate Dean of Faculty Development (2024-2025)); an Affiliate Scholar at the Center for Internet and Society at Stanford Law School; and a Fellow at University of North Carolina’s Center for Information, Technology, and Public Life, and University of Milan’s Information Society Law Center. Dave was a Visiting Research Collaborator at Princeton University's Center for Information Technology Policy (CITP) from 2014-2017. Dave is the co-author of Information Law, Governance, and Cybersecurity (West 2019), the founder of the award-winning Hearsay Culture (KZSU-FM, Stanford University), and of numerous law review articles. Dave has been credited for creating the scholarly field of trade secrecy and information access, and focuses on how new technologies can be understood, implemented, and regulated. His work has been recognized and influenced policymakers in the United States and throughout the globe.
His scholarship, which has been published in leading law reviews, focuses on the operation of intellectual property law at the intersection of technology and public life, specifically information flows in the lawmaking and regulatory process and intellectual property law's impact on public and private secrecy, transparency and accountability. He has spoken about his work in numerous venues, from the American Political Science Association annual meeting to the Information Society Project at Yale Law School, and internationally.
Active in policy analysis, he has made presentations to the negotiators at several negotiating rounds for the Trans Pacific Partnership Agreement (TPP) and Trans-Atlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (TTIP), testified before the Library of Congress, co-authored influential law professors’ letters regarding the TPP, Defend Trade Secrets Act (DTSA), Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA) and the Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement (ACTA), and is a past member of the North Carolina Mining and Energy Commission's Protection of Trade Secret and Proprietary Information Study Group that was tasked with writing the state's hydraulic fracturing regulations. He has been sought for advice on trade secret policy by the White House and Congress. Having been interviewed and quoted in many media outlets, including NBC News, NPR, The Wall Street Journal and The Los Angeles Times, he is a former contributor to Slate. He was previously a resident fellow at CIS, legislative aide in the New York State Assembly, assistant corporation counsel for the City of New York and in private practice in Manhattan. He holds a BS in industrial and labor relations from Cornell University and a JD from Case Western Reserve University School of Law.
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Publications
For a complete list of publications, see SSRN and Google Scholar.
Selected Publications on Trade Secret Law and Cybersecurity
Trade Secrets and Climate Change: Uncovering Secret Solutions to the Problem of Greenhouse Gas Emissions (with Sharon Sandeen of Hamline-Mitchell Law School), in Research Handbook on Intellectual Property and Climate Change, Josh Sarnoff ed. (Edward Elgar, forthcoming 2016).
School Boy’s Tricks: Reasonable Cybersecurity and the Process of Law Creation, 72 Wash. & Lee L. Rev. Online 323 (2015) (part of on-line symposium on the Defend Trade Secrets Act).
Here Come the Trade Secret Trolls, 71 Wash. & Lee L. Rev. Online 230 (2015) (with Sharon Sandeen).
The People’s Trade Secrets?, 18 Mich. Telecomm. & Tech. L. Rev. 61 (2011).
Secrecy and Unaccountability: Trade Secrets in Our Public Infrastructure, 59 Fl. L. Rev. 135 (2007) (republished in full in Trade Secrets and Undisclosed Information (Edward Elgar 2014).
The Impact of Trade Secrecy on Public Transparency, in The Law and Theory of Trade Secrecy: A Handbook of Contemporary Research, Rochelle C. Dreyfuss and Katherine J. Strandburg, eds., Edward Elgar Publishing (2011).
What Can the Uniform Trade Secrets Act Learn From the Bayh-Dole Act?, 33 Hamline L. Rev. 615 (2010) (invited to contribute to symposium issue marking 30th anniversary of the Uniform Trade Secrets Act).
Selected Publications on Cyberlaw, Information Systems and/or International IP Law
Ten Challenges in Technology and Intellectual Property Law for 2015, 15 Wake Forest J. Bus & Intell. Prop. L. 563 (2015).
The Social Layer of Freedom of Information Law, 90 N. C. L. Rev. 1687 (2012).
Bring in the Nerds: Secrecy, National Security, and the Creation of International Intellectual Property Law, 30 Cardozo Arts & Ent. L. J. 105 (2012)
Intellectual Property Law Without Secrets, in The Law of the Future and the Future of Law: Volume II, Sam Muller, Stavros Zouridis, Morly Frishman and Laura Kistemaker, eds., Torkel Opsahl, The Hague (2012)
Don’t Break the Internet, 64 Stan. L. Rev. Online 34 (2011) (with Mark Lemley of Stanford Law School and David G. Post of Temple Law School).
Transparency Soup: The ACTA Negotiating Process and "Black Box" Lawmaking, 26 Am. U. Intl. L. Rev. 811 (2011) (part of volume dedicated to analysis of the Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement (ACTA)).