Paul J. Heald

Paul J. Heald is a patent, copyright and international intellectual property law scholar, who was a faculty member at the University of Georgia School of Law from 1989 to 2011. He served as the school’s associate dean for faculty development and held the Allen Post Professorship. Heald went on to teach at the University of Illinois College of Law, where he retired in 2024 as the Harno & Cleary Chair in Law Emeritus. He is presently an honorary professor, fellow and associated researcher at CREATe, the RCUK Centre for Copyright at the University of Glasgow.

The author of approximately 50 scholarly articles in leading law journals and eight books, he served as a Fulbright Distinguished Chair at the Hanken School of Economics in Helsinki and has held visiting positions around the globe, including at Cambridge University, the University of Canterbury (New Zealand), University Austral (Argentina) and the University of Regensburg (Germany) in addition to the University of Texas and Vanderbilt University.

Heald earned his bachelor's and master's degrees in comparative literature from the University of Illinois. As an undergraduate there, he fenced for two Big Ten championship teams and placed 18th in epee at the 1980 NCAA championships. He earned his law degree with honors from the University of Chicago, where he served as associate editor and a staff member of the University of Chicago Law Review. Heald clerked for Judge Frank M. Johnson Jr. of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 11th Circuit.