DEGREES
J.D., Georgetown University Law Center
M.A., UCLA
B.A., UC Santa Cruz
COURSES
Contracts I and II
Patent Law
Copyright Law
Trademark Law
Intellectual Property Law
BIOGRAPHY
Professor Ernst teaches in the areas of intellectual property law and contracts. Professor Ernst has published extensively in the areas of intellectual property and contract law as they relate to innovation policy, consumer protection, freedom of speech, the courts, and legal history. Prior to entering academia Professor Ernst was a partner at the international law firm of Covington & Burling in San Francisco, practicing intellectual property and appellate litigation while maintaining an active pro bono practice focusing on veterans disability recovery, civil liberties, immigration law, and homeless advocacy. During these years Professor Ernst also co-taught Pre-Trial Civil Litigation at the U.C. Berkeley School of Law. After law school Professor Ernst served as a law clerk to the Honorable Timothy Dyk on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit. In 2010, Professor Ernst was recognized by the Federal Circuit Bar Association for his work on behalf of veterans. In 2006 and 2008, he received a Certificate of Excellence from Insight Housing (formerly the Berkeley Food and Housing Project) and serves on the board of that organization. Professor Ernst earned his JD Magna Cum Laude from Georgetown University Law Center. He has a BA in Modern Literary Studies from UC Santa Cruz and an MA in Comparative Literature from UCLA. You may download selected publications by Professor Ernst here.
SELECTED PUBLICATIONS
Trump Really is Too Small: The Right to Trademark Political Commentary 88 Brooklyn Law Review 839 (2023).
The Pharmaceutical Industry’s Corrupt Price Discrimination: A Single Solution? 51 Univ. Pac. L. Rev. 475 (2020).
A Patent Reformist Supreme Court and its Unearthed Precedent, 29 Fordham Intellectual Property, Media & Entertainment Law Journal 1 (2018).
Total Patent Exhaustion!, 59 IDEA 41 (2018).
The Supreme Court Case that the Federal Circuit Overruled, 68 Syracuse Law Review 53 (2018).
Pluralism Applied: A Concordant Approach to Selecting Contract Rules, 101 Marquette Law Review 87 (2017).
Why Patent Exhaustion Should Liberate Products (And Not Just People), 93 Denver Law Review 897, (2016).
The Lost Precedent of the Reverse Doctrine of Equivalents, 18 Vanderbilt Journal of Entertainment & Technology Law 467 (2016).
Protecting the Boundaries: Unclaimed Consideration in the Patentee’s Social Contract, 18 Tulane Journal of Technology & Intellectual Property 1 (2015).
Patent Exhaustion for the Exhausted Defendant: Should Parties be Able to Contract Around Exhaustion in Settling Patent Litigation?, 2014 University of Illinois Journal of Law, Technology & Policy 445 (2014).
The Honorable Timothy B. Dyk and Samuel F. Ernst, Patents, in Business and Commercial Litigation in the Federal Courts, (West 5th ed. 2021) (Robert L. Haig, ed.) (supplements published annually).
Radical Patent Law Reform in a Common Law Enabling System: A Metahistory, Chapter 8 in Forgotten Intellectual Property Lore (Shubha Ghosh, Ed., Elgar Press, November 2020).
You may download selected publications by Professor Ernst here.
SELECTED PRESENTATIONS
Section Two Small: Exploring the New Constitutional Limits on Trademark Law, University of New Hampshire Franklin Pierce School of Law, forthcoming, Nov. 3, 2023, presenting Trump Really Is Too Small: The Right to Political Commentary.
University of San Diego 10th Annual Patent Conference, Mar. 17, 2023: Presented A Taxonomy of Patent Eligible Subject Matter.
Works in Progress in Intellectual Property Conference, Feb. 7, 2022: Presented Another Free Speech Land Mine in the Lanham Act.
Works In Progress in Intellectual Property Conference, Feb. 18, 2021: Presented Literary Tropes and Rhetoric in the Supreme Court’s Patent Law Opinions.
American Association of Law Schools 2021 Annual Meeting, Jan. 6, 2021: Served as a commentator on the panel, New Voices in IP.
Syracuse University Intellectual Property Law Institute Web Cast Series, November 9, 2020, Conversation with Professor Shubha Ghosh about Radical Patent Law Reform in a Common Law Enabling System: A Metahistory.
Law and Society 2020 Annual Meeting, May 28-31, 2020: Co-presented The Disputing Process in Patent Enforcement: Responses and Resistance in the Shadow of IP Law.
Works In Progress in Intellectual Property Conference, February 7-9, 2020: Co-presented The Disputing Process in Patent Enforcement: Responses and Resistance in the Shadow of IP Law.
Changing Regulation of Pharmaceuticals: Issues in Pricing, Intellectual Property, Trade and Ethics, McGeorge School of Law, April 5-6, 2019: Presented The Pharmaceutical Industry’s Corrupt Price Discrimination System: A Single Solution?
The Patent Conference, March 22-24, 2019, University of San Diego: Presented: The Pharmaceutical Industry’s Corrupt Price Discrimination System: A Single Solution?
Fourth Annual Texas A&M Intellectual Property Scholars Roundtable, October 5-6, 2018: Presented A Patent Reformist Supreme Court and its Unearthed Precedent
t Around Exhaustion in Settling Patent Litigation?