Camilla Hrdy

Associate Professor of Law

University of Akron School of Law

Professor Camilla A. Hrdy is Associate Professor of Law and Director of Faculty Research & Development at The University of Akron School of Law.

Her primary teaching areas are Intellectual Property Law, Trade Secret Law, Trademark Law, Patent Law, State and Local Government Law, and Civil Procedure (Due Process and Federalism).

Professor Hrdy’s research has focused on the role of federal, state, and local governments in promoting innovation and economic development; the history of United States patent law; the law and policy of trade secrets and unfair competition; and the relationship between intellectual property law, innovation, and human well-being.

Her articles have appeared or will soon appear in various law journals, including Stanford Law Review, Boston College Law Review, Florida Law Review, Colorado Law Review, Wisconsin Law Review, Lewis & Clark Law Review, and Berkeley Law & Technology Journal.  She is a three-time recipient of the Thomas G. Byers Outstanding Faculty Scholarly Publication.

She is also a regular blogger on the IP scholarship blog, Written Description, where she writes on IP scholarship related to trade secrets, trademarks, patents, IP theory, the history of intellectual property in America, and numerous other topics.

Professor Hrdy holds a J.D. from Berkeley Law, a B.A. from Harvard University, and an M.Phil. in from the University of Cambridge, Department of History & Philosophy of Science. She received Harvard’s Hoopes prize, and a Redhead Prize from the University of Cambridge Department of History & Philosophy of Science.

Before coming to Akron Law, she was a resident fellow at the Yale Law School Information Society Project and a teaching fellow at the University of Pennsylvania Law School Center for Innovation, Technology & Competition.

She clerked for U.S. District Judge Janis Graham Jack in the Southern District of Texas.