Prof. Christopher Seaman

Christopher B. Seaman joined the Washington and Lee law faculty in 2012.  His research and teaching interests include intellectual property, property, and civil procedure, with a particular focus on intellectual property litigation and remedies for the violation of intellectual property rights. 

Professor Seaman’s intellectual property-related scholarship has appeared or is forthcoming in a variety of law reviews and journals, including the Virginia Law Review, the Iowa Law Review, the BYU Law Review, the Harvard Journal of Law and Technology, and the Yale Journal of Law and Technology. His empirical study of willful patent infringement and enhanced damages was selected as a winner of the Samsung-Stanford Patent Prize competition for outstanding new scholarship related to patent remedies. 

In addition, Professor Seaman has an interest in voting rights and election law, having written several works on the history, constitutionality, and potential future of Section 5 of the Voting Rights Act.

Professor Seaman was selected by the Student Bar Association as Faculty Member of the Year for 2013-2014.  He received the John W. Elrod Law Alumni Faculty Fellowship for Teaching in 2014 and was named an Ethan Allen Faculty Fellow for scholarship in 2015.

Professor Seaman received his B.A. in 2000 from Swarthmore College and his J.D. in 2004 from the University of Pennsylvania Law School, where he was an Executive Editor of the University of Pennsylvania Law Review and a recipient of the Edwin R. Keedy Award.  After a judicial clerkship with the Honorable R. Barclay Surrick of the U.S. District Court of the Eastern District of Pennsylvania, he practiced intellectual property law at Sidley Austin LLP in Chicago from 2005-2009, where he represented clients in patent, copyright, trademark and trade secret litigation in federal and state courts.  Prior to joining Washington and Lee’s faculty, Professor Seaman was a Visiting Assistant Professor at IIT Chicago-Kent College of Law and an adjunct professor at Loyola University Chicago School of Law.

• B.A., Swarthmore College
• J.D., University of Pennsylvania Law School; Executive Editor, University of Pennsylvania Law Review