Rebecca Schoff Curtin

Biography

Professor Curtin is a nationally recognized intellectual property scholar with a specialty in the early history of copyright and IP transactions. She has taught courses in Copyright, Trademark, IP Transactions, Property, and Trusts and Estates. Her scholarly interests include the transactional origins of copyright, the evolution of IP regimes in relation to the public domain, innovative transactions, and the protection of the public interest in innovation policy. With the Suffolk IP and Entrepreneurship Clinic, she has fought to keep fairy tale characters like Rapunzel in the public domain by opposing registration of the Rapunzel name as a trademark for dolls and toys. She is the author of several articles, which have appeared in the Tennessee Law Review, the Stanford Technology Law Review, the Columbia Journal of Law and the Arts, and the Journal of the Copyright Society of the U.S.A., including Locke’s (Literary) Property, a contribution to Forgotten Intellectual Property Lore, edited by Shubha Ghosh. She is also the author of a book on medieval manuscript culture and the rise of the printing press, Reformations: Three Medieval Authors in Manuscript and Movable Type. Prior to joining the faculty at Suffolk University School of Law, she practiced in the IP Transactions group of a large law firm in Boston. Prof. Curtin holds a PhD in English and American Literature and Language from Harvard University, a J.D. from the University of Virginia School of Law, and received her A.B. from Princeton University.

Education

• JD, University of Virginia
• PhD, English and American Literature and Language, Harvard University
• AB, Princeton University

Selected Publications

Articles

• The Art (History) of Bleistein, Forthcoming in The Journal of the Copyright Society of the U.S.A.
• Locke’s (Own) Literary Property, in FORGOTTEN IP LORE, Shubha Ghosh, ed., Edward Elgar Publishing Ltd., Fall 2020.
• Zombie Cinderella and the Undead Public Domain, 85 TENNESSEE LAW REVIEW 961 (2018).
• The Transactional Origins of Authors’ Copyright, 40 COLUM. J.L. & ARTS 175 (2016). [Also excerpted as Entering into Copyright: Author-Publisher Transactions in the Stationers’ Company Records in FORMS, FORMATS AND THE CIRCULATION OF KNOWLEDGE: BRITISH PRINTSCAPE’S INNOVATIONS 1688–1832 (Brill, July 2020).]
• SLAPPing Patent Trolls: What Patent Litigation Reform Can Learn from the Anti-SLAPP Movement, 18 STAN. TECH. L. REV. 39 (2014)
• Hackers and Humanists: Transactions and the Evolution of Copyright, 54 IDEA 103 (2013)
• The 'Capricious Privilege': Rethinking the Origins of Copyright Under the Tudor Regime, 59 J. COPYRIGHT SOC'Y U.S.A. 391 (2012) [peer-reviewed]
• Early Editing of Margery Kempe in Manuscript and Print, 9 J. EARLY BOOK SOC'Y FOR STUDY MANUSCRIPTS & PRINTING HIST. 75 (2006)
• Piers Plowman and Tudor Regulation of the Press, 20 Y.B. LANGLAND STUD. 93 (2006)

Books

REFORMATIONS: THREE MDIEVAL AUTHORS IN MANUSCRIPT AND MOVABLE TYPE (Brepols, 2007)

Media

• Rebecca Curtin on Fanny Holmes’s Impact on Bleistein, (January 2022)
• Releasing Rapunzel(s) from the Trademark Tower: A Consumer’s Real Interest in Trademark Registration, March 6, 2019, CO. TECH. L. J.

Bar Admittance

• Massachusetts