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Joseph Fishman

Professor of Law

Joseph Fishman’s research focuses on intellectual property, particularly its relationship to creativity and the creative process. He is a recognized expert on music copyright matters. His recent scholarship has covered such legal issues as infringing similarity between songs, the role of expert witnesses in music copyright litigation, judges' definition of musical originality, and trademark issues related to sound recordings. His work has appeared in leading journals, including the Harvard Law Review, NYU Law Review, and the University of Pennsylvania Law Review. Professor Fishman joined Vanderbilt’s law faculty in fall 2015 after serving as a Climenko Fellow and Lecturer in Law at Harvard Law School. He earned his A.B. magna cum laude from Harvard College with a joint major in music and religion, his M.Phil. in musicology from the University of Cambridge, and his J.D. cum laude from Harvard Law School. After law school, he was a law clerk for Judge Jeffrey R. Howard of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the First Circuit and for Judge Miriam Goldman Cedarbaum of the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York. He practiced as an associate at Jenner & Block in the firm's content, media and entertainment group, where he specialized in litigation involving the music industry, before entering the legal academy.

Research Interests

Intellectual property, entertainment law, law and creativity


Representative Publications

  • “Earning Trade Secrets,” 109 Cornell Law Review (forthcoming 2024) (with Deepa Varadarajan)
    Full Text | SSRN
  •  “Authoring Prior Art, 75 Vanderbilt Law Review 1159 (2022) (with Kristelia Garcia)
    Full Text | SSRN
  • "Originality's Other Path," 109 California Law Review 861 (2021)
    Full Text | SSRN
  • "Derivable Works," 67 UCLA Law Review 122 (2020)
    Full Text | SSRN
  • "The Future of Music Trademarks under Dastar," Chapter in The Oxford Handbook of Music Law and Policy, 2020 (Sean O'Connor, editor)
  • “Similar Secrets,” 167 University of Pennsylvania Law Review 1051 (2019) (with Deepa Varadarajan)
    Full Text | SSRN
  • "Music as a Matter of Law," 131 Harvard Law Review 1861 (2018)
    Full Text | SSRN
  • "Honest Copying Practices," 93 Notre Dame Law Review 267 (2017)
    Full Text | SSRN
  • "Creating Around Copyright," 128 Harvard Law Review 1333 (2015)
    Full Text | SSRN
  • "The Copy Process," 91 New York University Law Review 855 (2016)
    Full Text | SSRN