Amanda Reid

Amanda Reid is an associate professor in the school, an adjunct professor at the UNC School of Law, and faculty co-director of the UNC Center for Media Law and Policy.  She is also a candidate on the Fulbright Specialist Roster.  Her commitment to the Carolina community includes serving as a member on the Board of Directors of The Daily Tar Heel and serving as chair of the University Committee on Copyright.

She is an interdisciplinary legal scholar. Broadly speaking, her research analyzes meaning-making, which includes how we make sense of our cultural artifacts, and the freedoms and limitations imposed on meaning-making processes. In particular, she has studied how substantive laws (e.g., copyright) and procedural rules (e.g., burdens of proof and standards of review) impact — both positively and negatively — our ability to encode and decode meaning. Her scholarly works analyze these concepts in several unique contexts: the regulation of Internet radio through copyright laws; the fair use of copyrighted music in the clinical field of music therapy; the burden of proof and standards of appellate review employed in copyright litigation; and the intersection between roadside memorial crosses as a visual argument and the separation of church and state.

Prior to entering academia, she served as a commercial litigation associate with Holland & Knight, LLP (a Vault Top 100 law firm), where, among other projects, she had an opportunity to assist clients with trademark and copyright applications, a copyright trial in federal court, and a patent case through a Markman hearing. She also had the opportunity to serve as an elbow clerk for two federal judges. She served as a one-year judicial law clerk for the Honorable Susan H. Black of the Eleventh Circuit Court of Appeals, and as a two-year judicial law clerk for the Honorable Harvey E. Schlesinger of the Middle District of Florida. Before joining the UNC faculty, Reid was a professor of law and taught intellectual property, real property, trusts and estates, civil procedure, and legal research and writing courses.

Reid earned both a Ph.D. from the University of Florida College of Journalism and Communications and a J.D. from the University of Florida College of Law. While in law school, she was elected editor in chief of the University of Florida Journal of Law & Public Policy — UF’s only interdisciplinary law journal. She also earned an Intellectual Property Certificate, by focusing her elective law studies on core intellectual property courses. While in graduate school, she completed a doctoral dissertation titled, “Trademark Dilution Law: A Cross-Disciplinary Examination of Dilution and Brand Equity Scholarship.” She holds an master’s degree in speech communications, and bachelors’ degrees in philosophy and in communication from the Florida State University. With each of her degrees, she graduated in the top of her class. After earning her law degree, she was invited to join the honorary scholastic society Order of the Coif.

Reid’s interest in intellectual property began with branding and trademark law, and she remains fascinated with symbols and semiotics. Her scholarly articles have appeared in peer reviewed journals, flagship law reviews, and specialty journals from top law schools, including Yale Law & Policy Review, Nebraska Law Review, Cornell Journal of Law and Public Policy, Communication Law and Policy, and Jurimetrics: The Journal of Law, Science, and Technology. She is also a co-author of a Wolters Kluwer’s book titled, “Fundamentals of U.S. Intellectual Property Law: Copyright, Patent, and Trademark” and a monograph titled, “International Encyclopaedia of Laws, Intellectual Property Law.”

Education

• Ph.D., University of Florida College of Journalism and Communications
• J.D., University of Florida Levin College of Law
• M.A., The Florida State University
• B.A., The Florida State University