Lateef Mtima is a Professor of Law at the Howard University School of Law and the Founder and Director of the Institute for Intellectual Property and Social Justice in Washington, D.C. After graduating with honors from Amherst College in 1982, Prof. Mtima received his J.D. degree from Harvard Law School in 1985, where he was the co-founder and editor-in-chief of the Harvard BlackLetter Journal. Admitted to the New York and Pennsylvania bars, Prof. Mtima practiced with Coudert Brothers until 1996, and was later Of Counsel to the Philadelphia firm of Klehr, Harrison. In the fall of 2009, Prof. Mtima served as the distinguished Libra Visiting Scholar in Residence at the University of Maine School of Law. He is a Past President of the Giles S. Rich Inn of Court for the Federal Circuit, and also serves as a member of the ALI-ABA CPE Advisory Board of Directors on Intellectual Property, The Practical Lawyer Editorial Board, and the Advisory Board for the BNA Patent, Trademark, and Copyright Journal.
Some of Prof. Mtima's relevant publications include The Promise of Information Justice, Censoring Cyberspace: Regulating Communication on the Internet, Hannibal Travis, Ed. (Routledge Publishing, forthcoming 2013); A Social Justice Perspective on IP, Innovation, Entrepreneurship, Innovation and Entrepreneurship, Entrepreneurship and Innovation in Evolving Economies: The Role of Law, Megan Carpenter, Ed. (Edward Elgar 2012); What's Mine is Mine but What's Yours is Ours: IP Imperialism, the Right of Publicity, and Intellectual Property Social Justice in the Digital Information Age, 15 S.M.U. Sci. &Tech. L. Rev. 323 (2012); Fulfilling the Copyright Social Justice Promise: Digitizing Textual Information, 55 N.Y.L. Sch. L. Rev. 77 (2010) (quoted in The Authors Guild v. Google Inc., 770 F. Supp. 2d 666, 679, n. 15, (S.D.N.Y. 2011); Copyright Social Utility and Social Justice Interdependence: A Paradigm for Intellectual Property Empowerment and Digital Entrepreneurship, 112 W. Va. L. Rev. 98 (2009); Whom the Gods Would Destroy; Why Congress Prioritized Copyright Protection Over Internet Free Speech and Privacy in Passing the Digital Millennium Copyright Act, 61 Rutgers L. Rev. 627 (2009); So Dark the CON(TU) of Man: The Quest for a Software Derivative Work Right in Section 117, 70 U. Pitt. L. Rev. 1 (2008); and "Tasini and Its Progeny: The New Exclusive Right or Fair Use on the Electronic Publishing Frontier?" 14 Ford. Intell. Prop., Media & Ent. L. J. 369 (2004) (quoted in Greenberg v. National Geographic Society, 533 F.3d 1244, 1264, 1266 (11th Cir. 2008) (dissenting opinion)).