Mark McKenna has joined UCLA School of Law. The intellectual property and technology law expert will serve as a faculty co-director of the Ziffren Institute for Media, Entertainment, Technology and Sport Law and will be teaching torts this fall.

McKenna, whose core work has been on the subject of trademark law, has focused much of his recent work on design and on questions relating to the boundaries of various forms of intellectual property. He is also working on projects relating to governance of technology, including one that focuses “on the meaning of autonomy in a world of predictive algorithms.”

Professor McKenna comes to UCLA Law from Notre Dame Law School, where he taught beginning in 2008, most recently holding the title of John P. Murphy Foundation Professor of Law. He was the founding director of the Notre Dame Technology Ethics Center, a university-wide multi-disciplinary program. A prolific writer, he is the author of more than 40 articles and book chapters and the textbooks The Law of Design: Design Patent, Trademark & Copyright, and the third, fourth, and fifth editions of The Law of Intellectual Property.

McKenna, once an intellectual property practitioner with the Chicago firm Pattishall, McAulliffe, Newbury, Hilliard & Geraldson, graduated magna cum laude from the University of Notre Dame with B.A. in economics. He received his J.D. from the University of Virginia School of Law, where current UCLA Law Dean Jennifer Mnookin was his evidence professor.