ANNOUNCEMENT: Staff Attorney Andy Sellars named the Berkman Center's Corydon B. Dunham First Amendment Fellow

We are delighted to announce that, with the generous support of the Corydon B. Dunham Fellowship Fund of the Harvard Law School, the Berkman Center has named our own staff attorney, Andy Sellars, as the inaugural Dunham First Amendment Fellow.

Andy received his J.D. with high honors from the George Washington University Law School, where he was awarded the Peter D. Rosenberg Award for Patent and Intellectual Property Law, and the American Intellectual Property Law Association’s Jan Jancin Award, honoring the nation’s top intellectual property law student. He joined the Berkman Center as a Employee Fellow in July 2011, after having served as a summer intern at Berkman's Cyberlaw Clinic in 2009 and 2010.

Andy's work at the Digital Media Law Project (DMLP) has centered around Internet free speech and intellectual property matters. As a Cyberlaw Clinic intern and as a staff attorney Andy has been instrumental in drafting several amicus briefs on behalf of DMLP, including those for The Mortgage Specialists, Inc. v. Implode-Explode Heavy Industries, Inc. (Supreme Court of New Hampshire; prior restraint and reporter's privilege); Barclays Capital Inc. v. Theflyonthewall.com, Inc. (U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit; constitutional limits to the "hot news" misappropriation tort); Jenzabar, Inc. v. Long Bow Group, Inc. (Massachusetts Appeals Court; intersection of protections for critical speech with trademark law); Commonwealth v. Busa (Boston Municipal Court; constitutional challenge to anti-counterfeiting law); and Ron Paul 2012 Presidential Campaign Committee, Inc. v. Does (U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California; effort by Ron Paul’s presidential campaign to unmask anonymous online speakers). Andy has also worked with the staff of the DMLP and the Harvard Law School Cyberlaw Clinic to advise the OpenCourt project, a groundbreaking experiment run by WBUR, Boston's NPR news station, in connection with successful litigation brought to protect OpenCourt’s continuous streaming of video from an active Boston-area courtroom against prior restraints.

Additionally, Andy played a key role in our authorship of successful topic-specific guides to respond to important legal issues affecting citizen and professional journalists, including the Frequently Asked Questions Guide to Reporting on Occupy Wall Street (also available in a printable pocket version and mobile app) and a forthcoming guide to journalists' rights and responsibilities around covering the 2012 presidential nominating conventions. Andy is responsible for the daily operation of the Online Media Legal Network, our legal referral organization. Andy speaks frequently on topics addressing First Amendment and intellectual property issues, and writes regularly for this blog.

The DMLP and the Berkman Center are delighted to honor Andy’s dedication to First Amendment issues with the 2012 Dunham Fellowship, and to further the Berkman Center’s legal research and outreach into critical emerging areas of the law and public access to information.