Deepa Varadarajan
Associate Professor of Law Center for Entertainment, Sports & Intellectual Property Law, Center for Intellectual Property- Education
J.D., Yale Law School
B.A., summa cum laude, University of Texas at Austin
- Specializations
Copyright Law
Intellectual Property
Patent Law
Trade Secret Law
- Biography
Deepa Varadarajan, associate professor of law, focuses on intellectual property law and innovation. Her recent scholarship examines how trade secrecy (and associated contractual restrictions, such as non-disclosure and non-compete clauses) can impact employees, follow-on innovation, and the public interest. Her work has appeared or is forthcoming in the University of Pennsylvania Law Review, Cornell Law Review, U.C.L.A. Law Review, Notre Dame Law Review, Iowa Law Review, Fordham Law Review, Emory Law Journal, and Yale Law Journal, among other publications. Her work has been selected for presentation at the 2013 Yale/Stanford/Harvard Junior Faculty Forum and the plenary session of the 2018 Intellectual Property Law Scholars Conference. She is also the author of a novel, Late Bloomers (Random House), which is a Target Book Club pick and a Real Simple Best Book of 2023, and her short stories have appeared in the Georgia Review and Colorado Review.
Prior to joining Georgia State University, Varadarajan was an assistant professor at St. John’s University School of Law and a Thomas C. Grey Law Fellow at Stanford Law School. She received her J.D. from Yale Law School where she was an editor of the Yale Law Journal and co-editor of the Yale Human Rights & Development Law Journal. After law school, she clerked for the Honorable M. Margaret McKeown of the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals and the Honorable Charles P. Sifton of the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of New York, and she was a litigation associate at Covington & Burling LLP.
- Publications
Trade Secrecy’s Information Paradox, 100 Notre Dame Law Review (forthcoming 2025) (with Christopher Buccafusco and Jonathan Masur)
Earning Trade Secrets, 109 Cornell Law Review (forthcoming 2024) (with Joseph Fishman)
Narrowing FOIA’s Exemption for Business Secrets, Michigan Law Review Online (forthcoming 2024)
Forfeiting IP, 59 American Business Law Journal 175 (2022)
Business Method Innovation in US Manufacturing and Trade, Manufacturing & Service Operations Management (2022) (with Tian Chan & Anandhi Bharadwaj)
Business Secrecy Expansion and FOIA, 68 U.C.L.A. Law Review 462 (2021)
Similar Secrets, 167 University of Pennsylvania Law Review 1051 (2019) (with Joseph Fishman)
The Uses of IP Misuse, 68 Emory Law Journal 739 (2019)
Trade Secrecy Injunctions, Disclosure Risks, and eBay’s Influence, 59 American Business Law Journal 879 (2019)
The Trade Secret–Contract Interface, 103 Iowa Law Review 1543 (2018)
Trade Secret Precautions, Possession & Notice, 68 Hastings Law Journal 357 (2017)
Of Fences and Definite Patent Boundaries, 18 Vanderbilt Journal of Entertainment & Technology Law 563 (2016)
Trade Secret Fair Use, 83 Fordham Law Review 1401 (2014)
Improvement Doctrines, 21 George Mason Law Review 657 (2014)
A Trade Secret Approach to Protecting Traditional Knowledge, 36 Yale Journal of International Law 371 (2011)
Billboards and Big Utilities: Borrowing Land Use Concepts to Regulate “Nonconforming” Sources Under the Clean Air Act, 112 Yale Law Journal 2553 (2003)
Tortious Interference and the Law of Contract: The Case for Specific Performance Revisited, 111 Yale Law Journal 735 (2001)