Biography

Eric Goldman is Associate Dean for Research and Professor of Law at Santa Clara University School of Law. He also co-directs the school’s High Tech Law Institute and supervises the school’s Privacy Law Certificate. Before joining the SCU faculty in 2006, he was an Assistant Professor at Marquette University Law School, General Counsel of Epinions.com, and an Internet transactional attorney at Cooley Godward LLP.

Eric teaches and publishes in the areas of Internet Law, Intellectual Property and Advertising & Marketing Law. He blogs on these topics at the Technology & Marketing Law Blog, which has been inducted into the ABA Journal’s “Blawg Hall of Fame.” The California State Bar’s IP Section has named him an “IP Vanguard,” and Managing IP magazine twice named him to a shortlist of “IP Thought Leaders” in North America. In 2019, he received Santa Clara University’s Award for Sustained Excellence in Scholarship, the university’s highest award for scholarly achievement. In 2023, he received Santa Clara University’s Brutocao Family Foundation Award for Curriculum Innovation for his work on the school’s Privacy Law and Tech Edge JD certificates.

Eric received his BA, summa cum laude and Phi Beta Kappa, in Economics/Business from UCLA in 1988. He received his JD from UCLA in 1994, where he was a member of the UCLA Law Review, and concurrently received his MBA from the Anderson School at UCLA.

Selected career milestones:

  • 1991: got his first email account
  • 1993: published his first paper on Internet Law
  • 1994: started practicing Internet Law
  • 1996: taught his first Internet Law course
  • 2005: started blogging at the Technology & Marketing Law blog
  • 2010: started publishing his casebook on Internet Law
  • 2012: started publishing his co-authored casebook on Advertising & Marketing Law

Backchannel.com has said:

As an advocate for internet speech, Goldman is about as knowledgeable as they come. His blog is an exhaustive repository of Section 230 information, with commentary and links to cases dating back to 2005. He’s been teaching internet law since before Section 230 was passed and wrote a paper in law school about user-generated content before that term existed. To understand why he considers internet speech so vital, he says just look at what the world was like in the pre-internet era, when interested participants in society had no immediate outlets through which to speak up and share their voices. He talks about his first exposure to online bulletin boards in the early 1990s as if it were a spiritual awakening.

Wired has said:

One man who has had an outsize effect on the way Section 230 is treated in public discussion is Eric Goldman, a professor at Santa Clara University School of Law, where he codirects the High Tech Law Institute. He is also a prolific blogger, keeping seemingly exhaustive tabs on the latest developments in internet law, including rulings involving Section 230. Goldman has been writing about this area for so long that the Stratton Oakmont ruling, which Section 230 was created to overturn, cites a paper he published in 1993 while still in law school….He has for years been journalists’ go-to source on all things Section 230. He’s a reporter’s dream: encyclopedically knowledgeable, articulate, personable, and easy to get on the phone.

Front Page Confidential has called him “the modern-day equivalent of Cassandra.” Newsy has described him as “one of the leading…& only…emoji law experts.”

Eric’s work has been cited in opinions by federal appellate courts (3rd, 7th, & D.C. Circuits), state supreme courts (Massachusetts, Ohio, and Virginia), international courts, and many others. See this citation list.

See Eric’s curriculum vitae, SSRN page, and Wikipedia entry.

Selected interviews with Eric:

A profile of his work:

Some arcane facts about him: