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Peter K. Yu (余家明) holds the Kern Family Chair in Intellectual Property Law and is the founding director of the Intellectual Property Law Center at Drake University Law School.  He is also a Wenlan Scholar Chair Professor (文澜学者讲座教授) and a research fellow of the Center for Studies of Intellectual Property Rights at Zhongnan University of Economics and Law in Wuhan, China. In the summers, he serves as Visiting Professor of Law at the University of Hong Kong Faculty of Law.  In spring 2009, he will be Visiting Professor of Law at Washington & Lee University School of Law.  He is also a member of the affiliated faculty of the Working Group on Property, Citizenship, and Social Entrepreneurism (PCSE) at Syracuse University College of Law. 

Born and raised in Hong Kong, Professor Yu is a leading expert in international intellectual property and communications law.  He writes and lectures extensively on intellectual property, international trade, communications policy, international and comparative law, and the transition of the legal systems in China and Hong Kong.  Ranked among the Top 40 Law Authors in the Social Science Research Network (SSRN), he is the author or editor of three books and more than 50 law review articles, including Intellectual Property and Information Wealth, a multi-volume reference book set recently published by Praeger Publishers.

A frequent commentator in the national and international media, he has spoken at Harvard, Yale, Oxford, UC Berkeley, Michigan, Virginia, Georgetown,  McGill, Toronto, University of London, Humboldt, Fudan, Tsinghua, and other leading research institutions from around the world and at events organized by the World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO), the International Telecommunication Union (ITU), the U.N. Conference on Trade and Development (UNCTAD) and the U.N. Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) as well as the Chinese, Hong Kong, and U.S. governments.  His lectures and presentations have spanned more than fifteen countries on five continents, including Australia, Belgium, Brazil, Canada, China (including Hong Kong and Macau), Finland, France, Germany, India, Italy, Japan, Russia, Singapore, South Korea, Switzerland, Thailand, the United Kingdom, and the United States. His publications have been translated into Chinese, Croatian and Japanese.

Licensed to practice law in the State of New York and before the United States Supreme Court, Professor Yu currently sits on the executive committee of the American Branch of the International Law Association and the editorial boards of the Journal of Copyright Society of the U.S.A and the Journal of World Intellectual Property. He is also a member of the Legal Advisory Board of the IP Justice's international Cyberlaw Clinic, which was established to promote the global public interest in Internet law and policy discussions at ICANN. In addition, he serves as a director of U.S.-China Lawyers Society and was the co-chair of the 2006 International Law Weekend and the host of the 11th Conference of Asian Pacific American Law Faculty (CAPALF).

Before joining Drake University, he taught at Michigan State University College of Law and founded its nationally-renowned Intellectual Property & Communications Law Program.  He was also a member of the core faculty of the Asian Studies Center, held a courtesy appointment in the Department of Telecommunication, Information Studies and Media at Michigan State University, and was a faculty associate of The James H. and Mary B. Quello Center for Telecommunication Management & Law.

In 2007, he won both the MSU Teacher-Scholar Award and the Student Bar Association's Distinguished Faculty Award, for which he was nominated three times in four years.  He was also inducted into Phi Kappa Phi as a faculty member.  During his tenure at Michigan State, the U.S. News and World Reports ranked the MSU Intellectual Property & Communications Law Program the best among the Big 10 law schools and one of the top 20 programs in the country.

Prior to joining Michigan State University, he was Acting Assistant Professor of Law, the first executive director of the Intellectual Property Law Program, and deputy director of the Howard M. Squadron Program in Law, Media & Society at Benjamin N. Cardozo School of Law, Yeshiva University, where he taught immediately after law school graduation.  He was also a research associate of the Programme in Comparative Media Law & Policy at the Centre for Socio-Legal Studies, University of Oxford.

During his tenure at Cardozo, the U.S. News and World Reports consistently ranked the Cardozo Intellectual Property Law Program among the top five programs in the country.  He co-founded both the Annual Intellectual Property Scholars Conference, which rotates among DePaul, Cardozo, and Berkeley/Stanford, and the Annual Chinese Internet Research Conference, which has been held at USC Annenberg, Berkeley, MSU, NTU, Texas A&M, and HKU.

While in New York, he sat on the Board of Directors of the Asian American Bar Association of New York and served on the association's Litigation Committee and the Young Lawyers Committee of the Intellectual Property Law Section of the New York State Bar Association.  In addition, he was the founding managing editor of Communications Law in Transition Newsletter and was in charge of media law projects with USAID, IREX, and the European Commission.

Professor Yu received his J.D. from Benjamin N. Cardozo School of Law, Yeshiva University, where he served as Executive Editor of the Cardozo Law Review, Managing Editor of the Post-Soviet Media Law & Policy Newsletter, and Assistant Editor of the Cardozo Studies in Law and Literature (now Law and Literature).  He is a member of the Order of the Coif and was a Dr. Samuel Belkin Scholar and a member of the Cardozo Basketball Team.  Upon graduation, he received the Dr. Samuel Belkin Service Award for exceptional contributions to the continued growth of the Law School and the prestigious Alumni Association Scholarship.  He is also a winner of 3 writing competitions, including the Gerald Rose Memorial Competition and the Nathan Burkan Memorial Writing Competition.

He received a B.A. in English and Political Science from the University of Wisconsin-Madison, where he was the President of the Billiards Club and the Vice-President of the Chinese Student Association (Hong Kong).  He represented the University in the Big Ten Pool Tournament and repeatedly in the ACUI Regional Pool Tournament.  In 1994, he was invited to participate in the 7th Annual Wisconsin State Team Championships.

His interests include travel, basketball, snooker and pool, bowling, classical and Broadway music, reading mysteries and books on history and international politics, and cheering for the L.A. Lakers (which he supported since the mid-1980s).  He lives in Des Moines, Iowa and Hong Kong.

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