Dennis Karjala

Dennis Karjala's work in intellectual property, specifically copyright law, is internationally recognized and complemented by his facility in written and spoken Japanese. Professor Karjala, who joined the College in 1978, teaches courses in property law, copyright, international intellectual property and intellectual property in cyberspace. For the 2008-09 academic term, he is on sabbatical in Bratislava, Slovakia, teaching courses in United States and international intellectual property at the Law Faculty of the Comenius University, and continuing his work in intellectual property law, focusing on copyright, digital technologies, and rights for traditional knowledge.

Professor Karjala was a Fulbright Senior Research Scholar at the Max Planck Institute in Munich, a Fulbright Teaching Fellow at the University of Hokkaido, and a Japan Foundation Fellow at the University of Tokyo. He has held visiting professorships at numerous institutions, including the University of Minnesota Law School, Washington University School of Law and UCLA School of Law. He also practiced law at the firm of McCutchen, Doyle, Brown & Enersen in San Francisco.

In addition to his prowess in Japanese, Professor Karjala speaks German, along with some French and Slovak.