Dan L. Burk, 1962 — 2024

Dan L. Burk, a founding member of the faculty at UC Irvine School of Law and the first Chancellor’s Professor at the law school, died Sunday. He was 61 and had cancer.

“Burk’s extraordinary impact through his prolific scholarship and academic accomplishments, the founding of UCI Law, and his mentorship of UCI Law students and alumni — as well as intellectual property scholars and lawyers across the world — will live on,” the university said in a statement. “He consistently ranked among the leading intellectual property scholars in the American legal academy and has been a leading figure in debates over gene patenting, digital copyright, and computer trespass.”

His lifelong friend, Santa Clara University School of Law Professor Eric Goldman, lauded Burk as a brilliant and towering figure in the intellectual property academic community.

“Dan had a huge personal influence on my life and career — a sentiment that is shared by dozens or, more likely, hundreds of professors,” Goldman said. “He served as one of my role models in several ways, but perhaps most significantly in his tireless support for and encouragement of new community members.”

The university said that Burk became interested in the intersection of science and law in the late 1980s, following the first criminal conviction in the U.S. based on DNA profiling evidence. His passion for science and the law led him to become an internationally recognized authority on issues related to high technology, and his impact extended far beyond UCI law school.

“I always viewed Dan as a ‘law and technology’ scholar or, perhaps even more precisely, a ‘law and science’ scholar. His work frequently considered the implications of new technological and scientific developments for the law. It was consistent with those scholarly interests that Dan was at the vanguard of Internet Law scholarship, where he made several impactful contributions,” Goldman said.

Burk authored several papers on intellectual property and Internet law commons. In 1995, he wrote about the rising phenomenon of the internet and how established principles of trademark law should be applied to resolve controversies over domain names and other internet infrastructure.

“In retrospect, this paper deploys the now-standard methodology of Internet Law scholarship,” Goldman explained. “It describes the Internet in technological terms, makes analogies to other media, and tries to isolate what’s unique, special, or different about the new technology. However, when Dan wrote this paper in 1995, that template didn’t exist. He helped set it.”

According to the university, several early decisions by U.S. courts regarding the regulation of the Internet were influenced by Burk’s work on emerging technologies. His 1996 article in the Connecticut Law Review, “Federalism in Cyberspace,” shaped the character of the internet by providing a framework for regulating it. American Library Association v. Pataki, 969 F. Supp. 160 (S.D.N.Y. 1997) American Civil Liberties Union v. Johnson, 194 F.3d 1149 (10th Cir. 1999)

Burk and Stanford University Professor of Law and Senior Fellow Mark A. Lemley co-authored “The Patent Crisis and How the Courts Can Solve It,” an influential work published in 2009 that illustrates the barriers to innovation created by the “catchall” standards in the patent system.

“Dan was one of the first people I met when I started teaching in the brand new field of internet law in 1994. He and I have written together for decades, and for years, we frequented the same conferences so often that literally everyone confused us for each other,” Lemley said. “He was a great person and a welcoming colleague to generations of junior scholars. The world will not be the same without him.”

Lemley said that even as Burk battled cancer, he continued his work, and “he finished his last law review article and had it accepted for publication the week of his death. Since his death, dozens of people have spoken up to say how Dan’s guidance changed their lives as junior scholars.”

“He would not hesitate to tell you if you were wrong, but he also wouldn’t hesitate to praise your work if he thought you deserved it,” Lemley said. “He was particularly notable for helping junior scholars and those thinking of entering teaching.”

On Friday, Feb. 9, the UC Irvine, as part of the 15th anniversary celebration of the founding of the School of Law, will honor Burk’s contributions to the school and the law. This all-day event will feature panels of leading legal academics addressing Burk’s work on patent law, the internet, intellectual property and gender, and intellectual property and social theory.

Burk is survived by his wife, Laurie, and his daughter, Rayne.