Taysir Awad
Taysir Awad
Country
Palestine
Education
LL.B. Birzeit University, LL.M. University of California, Davis.
Faculty Advisor
Madhavi Sunder
Areas of Study
Copyright Law, International Intellectual Property, Comparative Law
Taysir’s scholarly interests include Intellectual Property Law, International Intellectual Property Law, Copyright Law, Trademark Law, Patent Law, Comparative Law and Constitutional Law regarding the First Amendment.
His dissertation project, “Copyright Fair Use in Palestine: To Emulate, or not to Emulate?,” seeks to discuss how lower courts in the United States have erroneously seized on a single observation on fair use in the Supreme Court decision, Campbell v. Acuff-Rose. That decision generated the necessity of “transformativeness”, neglecting the distinctive character of a parody, and applied an overly broad interpretation effectively eradicating a copyright holder’s right to derivative works. This expanded doctrine of fair use has been adopted verbatim by countries, such as Singapore, South Korea, Israel, the Philippians and Hong Kong, abandoning the narrower concept of fair dealing. Taysir’s dissertation assesses the feasibility, merit and worthiness of the American fair use doctrine on a global level, and specifically in the case of Palestine.
Prior to joining the SJD program, Taysir worked as a Corporate Associate/Attorney at one of Palestine’s largest law firms. He also worked as a litigation lawyer before opening the first intellectual property law firm in Ramallah. Taysir is also a certified legal translator by the Ministry of Justice.