Megan M. Carpenter
Associate Professor of Law
E-mail Professor Carpenter
Courses: Property I, Internet Law
Professor Megan Carpenter joined the faculty of Texas Wesleyan University School of Law in 2007. Before coming to Texas Wesleyan, she was a visiting associate professor of law at West Virginia University College of Law and a Doctoral Fellow at St. Thomas University in New Brunswick, Canada. Prior to teaching, Professor Carpenter was in private law practice at Kirkpatrick & Lockhart, LLP (now K&L Gates), where she enjoyed a lively practice in the intellectual property practice group, representing technology, multimedia, and sports and entertainment clients in a variety of trademark and copyright issues, including prosecution, licensing, and enforcement of those clients’ intellectual property rights around the world.
Professor Carpenter’s scholarship interests exemplify her commitment to both intellectual property and public service. She has published in the areas of intellectual property and human rights both individually and collectively, including, for example, an examination of copyright legal principles as applied to the works of indigenous peoples. As a lover of pop culture and a child of the 1980s, Professor Carpenter is currently writing an article that examines the intellectual property issues associated with the cultural icon of the “mixed tape.” In addition, among her other achievements, Professor Carpenter was the founder of Coal to Content, a nonprofit organization dedicated to promoting the role of intellectual property in economies transitioning from old to new, from industry and manufacturing to information and invention. As part of this effort, she was the founder and organizer of a seminal conference designed to foster this dialogue, “Coal to Content: Intellectual Property and Technology in the New Economy,” which took place in Morgantown, West Virginia, in 2006. Professor Carpenter also writes creatively; two of her creative works are being published in 2008 in the Legal Studies Forum.
Professor Carpenter received an LL.M. degree from the National University of Ireland at Galway in 2003. She earned her J.D. from the West Virginia University College of Law, where she was executive articles editor for the West Virginia Law Review, the fourth oldest law review in the United States. Professor Carpenter also earned a Master of Arts degree from West Virginia University, and a certificate from the Universidad Internacional Menendez y Pelayo in Santander, Spain.
Selected Publications
Bare Justice: A Feminist Reconceptualization of Justice and Its Potential Application to Crimes of Sexual Violence in Post-Genocide Rwanda, Creighton L. Review (accepted for presentation and publication, April 2008).
River Rats, Legal Studies Forum (accepted for publication in Vol. 32(2), 2008).
The Lexical Heart, 32(1) Legal Studies Forum 137 (2008).
Intellectual Property and Indigenous Peoples: Conforming Copyright Law to the Needs of a Global Community, 7 Yale Journal of Human Rights & Development Legal Journal 51 (2004).
Preserving a Place for the Past in Our Present: Historic Preservation Law in West Virginia, 100 West Virginia Law Review 423 (1997).
Frequently Asked Legal Questions, North Central West Virginia Legal Aid Society, 2d. ed. (1997).