Brian Frye

Spears-Gilbert Professor of Law

Location: Room 271, College of Law
Phone: (859) 218-0632
Email: brianlfrye@uky.edu

Brian L. Frye joined the faculty of the College of Law in 2012. He has taught classes on intellectual property, copyright, trademark, nonprofit organizations, art law, civil procedure, professional responsibility, contracts, property, constitutional law, and media law, as well as seminars on intellectual property theory, property theory, and law & popular culture. He has also been a visiting professor at the Maurice A. Deane School of Law at Hofstra University, Tulane University School of Law, Southern University Law Center, and Jilin University Law School.

Professor Frye's research focuses on intellectual property and organizations, especially in relation to artists, the art market, and arts organizations. He has published more than 100 academic articles on a wide range of subjects. He is best-known for his work on plagiarism, blockchain, and legal history, as well as his practice of creating conceptual art in the medium of legal scholarship.

Professor Frye has published journalistic articles and op-eds on a wide range of subjects in publications including Jurist, TechDirt, the Hill, October, The New Republic, Film Comment, Cineaste, Senses of Cinema, World Picture Journal, Outland, and Right-Click Save, among others. He has also been quoted as an expert by publications including the New York Times, the Washington Post, NPR, Bloomberg's Money Stuff, CoinDesk, and Decrypt, among many others.

Professor Frye is also an artist. He produced the documentary film Our Nixon (2013), which premiered at SXSW, was broadcast by CNN, and opened theatrically nationwide. He participated in the 2002 Whitney Biennial and his artwork is included in the permanent collection of the Whitney Museum of American Art. His short films were presented by the New York Film Festival, the San Francisco International Film Festival, as well as many different museums and theaters in the United States and internationally. His artistic practice is currently focused on producing works of conceptual art that illustrate the economic reality of the art market as a securities market.

Since 2018, Professor Frye has hosted Ipse Dixit, a popular podcast on legal scholarship with more than 800 episodes and thousands of listeners.

For more information, Professor Frye's Wikipedia page is https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brian_L._Frye.

Specialties

Art Law
Copyright
Intellectual Property
Nonprofit Organizations
Civil Procedure
Law and Popular Culture
Law and Social Norms
Open Access Scholarship

Courses

Law 929 Copyright Law
Law 935 Intellectual Property
Law 858 Nonprofit Organizations
Law 835 Professional Responsibility
Law 90_ Trademark Law
Law 957 Seminar: Intellectual Property Theory

Books & Book Chapters

The Zapruder Film, in A History of Intellectual Property in 50 Objects (Daniel Hunter & Claudy Op den Kamp eds., Cambridge Univ. Press 2018).
A Revolution in Favor of Television: WCVB-TV and Robert Gardner's Screening Room, in Looking (Rebecca Meyers, William Rothman & Charles Warren eds., SUNY Press 2016).

Scholarly Articles

Scholarship is available for download at Brian L. Frye's SelectedWorks page.

The Lion, the Bat & the Thermostat: Metaphors on Consciousness, __ Savannah L. Rev. __ (forthcoming).
The Athlete’s Two Bodies: Reflections on the Ontology of Celebrity, Incite J. Experimental Media, no. 7, (forthcoming).
New Art for the People: Art Funds & Financial Technology, 93 Chi.-Kent L. Rev. 113 (2018).
Invention of a Slave, 68 Syracuse L. Rev. 181 (2018).
An Empirical Study of University Patent Activity, 7 NYU J. Intell. Prop. & Ent. L. 51 (2017) (with Christopher J. Ryan, Jr.).
A Revealed Preferences Approach to Ranking Law Schools, 69 Ala. L. Rev. 495 (2017) (with Christopher J. Ryan, Jr.).
Against Creativity, 11 N.Y.U. J.L. & Liberty 426 (2017).
Equitable Resale Royalties, 24 J. Intell. Prop. L. 1 (2017).
Incidental Intellectual Property, 33 Ent. & Sports Law. 24 (2017).
Reflections on Motion Picture Evidence, 12 world picture (Winter 2017), perma.cc/T9ZL-GB8E.
Fixing Forum Selling, 25:2 Univ. Miami Bus. L. Rev. 1 (2017) (with Christopher J. Ryan, Jr.).
An Empirical Study of the Copyright Practices of American Law Journals, 16 J. Marshall Rev. Intell. Prop. L. 207 (2017) (with Franklin L. Runge & Christopher J. Ryan, Jr.).
Aesthetic Nondiscrimination & Fair Use, 3 Belmont L. Rev. 29 (2016).
Art & the "Public Trust" in Municipal Bankruptcy, 93 U. Det. Mercy L. Rev. 629 (2016).
Machiavellian Intellectual Property, 78 Univ. of Pittsburgh L. Rev. 1 (2016).
Copyright in Pantomime, 34 Cardozo Arts & Ent. L.J. 307 (2016).
Social Technology and the Origins of Popular Philanthropy, 32 Ga. St. U. L. Rev. 413 (2016).
Plagiarism is Not a Crime, 54 Duq. L. Rev. 133 (2016).
Three Great Phonographers: Warhol, Nixon & Kaufman, Incite J. Experimental Media, no. 6, Fall 2015, at 188.
The Most Scholarly Justices, 18 Green Bag 435 (2015).
IP as Metaphor, 18 Chap. L. Rev. 735 (2015).
Eldred & the New Rationality, 104 Ky. L. J. Online (July 17, 2015), https://perma.cc/7759-MWNX.
Andy Warhol's Pantry, 8 Akron Intell. Prop. J. 17 (2015).
Solving Charity Failures, 93 Or. L. Rev. 155 (2014).
Justifying Academic Freedom, 9 FIU L. Rev. 45 (2013).
Justice John Marshall Harlan: Lectures on Constitutional Law, 1897-98, 81 Geo. Wash. L. Rev. Arguendo 12 (2013) (with Josh Blackman & Michael McCloskey).
Justice John Marshall Harlan: Professor of Law, 81 Geo. Wash. L. Rev. 1063 (2013) (with Josh Blackman & Michael McCloskey).
On the Origins of the Robert Beck Memorial Cinema, Incite J. Experimental Media, no. 4, Fall 2013, at 129.
The Dialectic of Obscenity, 35 Hamline L. Rev. 229 (2012).
The Gray Lady's Guide to Avant-Garde Cinema, Incite J. Experimental Media, no. 3, Fall 2011, at 54.
The Peculiar Story of United States v. Miller, 3 N.Y.U. J.L. & Liberty 48 (2008).

Popular Media

Art in the Shadow of the Law, 82 Bench & B. 6 (Mar. / Apr. 2018).
The Possible Redundancy of §230, The Recorder (Nov. 10, 2017), https://www.law.com/therecorder/sites/therecorder/2017/11/10/the-possible-redundancy-of-§230/?slreturn=20171014161950. [http://perma.cc/FUW5-UHFB]
Copyright in a Nutshell for Found Footage Filmmakers, Found Footage Magazine, May 2016, at 34.

Brian Frye Spears-Gilbert Professor of Law

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Brian Frye

Spears-Gilbert Professor of Law