Pamela Samuelson

Also known as Pam Samuelson

Pamela Samuelson is a legal scholar at the University of California, Berkeley, whose writing on copyright and software extends to the legal questions raised by AI-generated works and generative AI training. She earned degrees at the University of Hawaii and a law degree at Yale in 1976, then taught at the University of Pittsburgh School of Law from 1981 to 1996. In 1985 she argued that copyright in works created by computer programs should go to the program's user, and in 2023 she examined in Science the copyright questions raised by generative AI lawsuits. A MacArthur Foundation fellow from 1997 to 2002, she co-founded Authors Alliance in 2014. She holds a distinguished professorship of law at Berkeley, where she is a co-director of the Berkeley Center for Law & Technology.

Now at: University of California, Berkeley School of Law, Authors Alliance and Electronic Frontier Foundation
Born: 1948
Works: 415
Badges: Founder
Loyal
Pioneer

Years link to their sources. Publication numbers from OpenAlex, as of 22 October 2026. Citations and h-index are hidden because this OpenAlex record may be incomplete or mix in other authors.

Timeline

1971–1976

Hawaii degrees and Yale Law

She earns a BA in 1971 and an MA in 1972 at the University of Hawaii, then a JD at Yale Law School in 1976. She begins her legal career as an associate at Willkie Farr & Gallagher in New York.
1981–1996

Professor at Pittsburgh Law

She teaches at the University of Pittsburgh School of Law from 1981 to 1996. In 1985, she argues that copyright in works created by computer programs should go to the program's user, and she foresees that ownership of AI program output may become a hotly contested issue. In 1994, she co-authors "A Manifesto Concerning the Legal Protection of Computer Programs" with Randall Davis, Mitchell Kapor and J.H. Reichman.
1996

Professor at Berkeley

In 1996, she joins UC Berkeley with a joint appointment at Berkeley Law and the School of Information. Her courses there cover intellectual property, cyberlaw and information privacy.
1997–2002

A MacArthur fellowship

She is a fellow of the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation from 1997 to 2002, in the Class of 1997. Her fellowship work aims at an intellectual property framework that promotes wide availability of information and knowledge while allowing free expression and inquiry in the digital era.
2014

Co-founding Authors Alliance

In 2014, she co-founds Authors Alliance, a nonprofit that promotes the public interest in access to knowledge, and serves as chair of its board.
2023

Generative AI meets copyright

In 2023, she publishes "Generative AI Meets Copyright" in Science, which examines the copyright questions raised by lawsuits from visual artists and writers over training generative AI models. She writes that if the plaintiffs prevail, the only lawful U.S. generative AI systems may be those trained on public domain works or under licenses.
2025

Talks on AI training lawsuits

In February 2025, she gives the Schwartz Reisman Institute seminar "Will copyright derail generative AI technologies?", on the thirty-five U.S. lawsuits and two in Canada challenging the use of in-copyright works to train generative AI models. In September 2025, she joins Lawfare's Scaling Laws podcast to discuss district court rulings in Bartz v. Anthropic and Kadrey v. Meta and whether training on copyrighted data is a transformative fair use.
As of October 2026

Sherman Professor at Berkeley

She is the Richard M. Sherman '74 Distinguished Professor of Law at UC Berkeley, a co-director of the Berkeley Center for Law & Technology, and a faculty member of the College of Computing, Data Science, and Society. She chairs the board of Authors Alliance and serves on the board of the Electronic Frontier Foundation.