Melvin G. Shimm Professor of Law

 

David Lange is the Melvin G. Shimm Professor of Law at Duke University, where he has been a member of the faculty of the School of Law since 1971. Prior to joining the Duke faculty he worked in radio, television, and motion picture production, and as a practicing lawyer with an emphasis in media law. He acted subsequently for a number of years as counsel to a leading North Carolina law firm with an emphasis in copyright, trademarks, and unfair competition and related intellectual property matters.

At the Duke Law School he teaches courses in intellectual property, copyright, trademarks, and unfair competition, and entertainment law (including motion picture production, finance, and distribution). He speaks, writes, and lectures frequently in these fields. He has testified by invitation before Congress. He gave the Twenty-Second Annual Donald Brace Memorial Lecture to the United States Copyright Society at Columbia Law School in 1992. Most recently he has completed the third edition of a co-authored casebook in intellectual property published by West Publishing Company in 2007, as well as the co-authored manuscript for a book on intellectual property and the first amendment, which has been accepted for publication by Stanford University Press. An internationally recognized authority in his areas of specialty, he has also taught and lectured in Europe, Australia, and Asia. He has served as a pro bono consultant to the Vietnamese National Office of Industrial Property and to the National Copyright Office of Vietnam.

He is a founding member of the ABA Forum Committee on the Entertainment and Sports Industries and served on the Forum Committee's initial Governing Board. He served as a member of the Board of Advisors to the Reporter of the American Law Institute's Restatement (Third) of Unfair Competition. He has also served as a member of the Board of Trustees of The Copyright Society of the United States.

He is married and has five children and seven grandchildren.