Stephanie Plamondon

Professor of Law

Stephanie Plamondon joined the BYU Law faculty in 2015. Her research focuses on mind sciences, innovation, and the law. She is particularly interested in applying empirical work in psychology and neuroscience to current legal and policy challenges in intellectual property law, criminal law, public health law, and other areas. Her recent research has explored how poverty impacts decision-making and what this means for innovation, criminal law, and distributive justice. Her most recent article on the topic, "Impoverished IP," was selected for the Yale/Harvard/Stanford Junior Faculty Forum.

Prior to joining BYU's faculty, Professor Plamondon was the resident academic fellow with Stanford's Program in Neuroscience and Society (SPINS), a joint initiative of Stanford Law School and Stanford Department of Psychology. She also spent time as a patent litigation attorney at Goodwin Procter in Boston, and as a law clerk for the Honorable Raymond C. Clevenger III on the Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit in Washington, D.C. In Fall 2018, she was a visiting professor at Notre Dame Law School.

Professor Plamondon holds a J.D. (cum laude) from Harvard Law School, a Ph.D. in Neuroscience from the University of Utah School of Medicine, and an undergraduate degree in Physics from the University of Prince Edward Island in her hometown of Charlottetown. Her legal writing has been published in the Northwestern University Law Review, the Boston University Law Review, the Ohio State Law Journal, the Berkeley Technology Law Journal, and the Connecticut Law Review, among other outlets. Her science writing has appeared in Nature, Animal Behaviour, and the Journal of Comparative Psychology.

Courses Taught

  • Criminal Law
  • Intellectual Property Colloquium
  • Law and Entrepreneurship Colloquium
  • Patent Law
  • Trademark Law

Education

  • J.D., Harvard University
  • Ph.D., University of Utah
  • B.Sc., University of Prince Edward Island
  • LAW:
  • Smart Patents, U. Ill. L. Rev. (forthcoming).
  • Inequality in Abundance, in Frontiers in Research (Mark Lemley & Deven Desai eds., forthcoming 2022).
  • Innovation’s Hidden Externalities, BYU L. Rev. (forthcoming). [SSRN]
  • Innovation in Adversity, 49 Florida St. U. L. Rev. (forthcoming) (with Clark D. Asay). [SSRN]
  • Macro- and Micro-Level Accounts of Behavior in Innovation Law: The Role of Social Norms and Psychological Motivations, in Intellectual Property Law in Context: Law and Society Perspectives on IP (William T. Gallagher & Debora J. Halbert eds., Cambridge Univ. Press., forthcoming) (with Laura G. Pedraza-Fariña).
  • COVID-19 and Its Impact(s) on Innovation, 2021 Utah L. Rev. 805 (with Clark D. Asay). [SSRN]
  • Impoverished IP, 81 Ohio St. L.J. 523 (2020). [SSRN]
  • Malleable Rationality, 79 Ohio St. L.J. 17 (2018). [SSRN]
  • Anti-Innovation Norms, 112 Nw. U. L. Rev. 1069 (2018) (with Laura G. Pedraza-Fariña). [SSRN]
  • Innovation Inc., 32 Berkeley Tech. L.J. 713 (2017). [SSRN]
  • Rational Faith: The Utility of Fairness in Copyright, 97 B.U. L. Rev. 1487 (2017). [SSRN]
  • The Psychology of Patent Protection, 48 Connecticut L. Rev. 297 (2015). [SSRN]
  • Adjustments, Extensions, Disclaimers, and Continuations: When do Patent Term Adjustments Make Sense?, 41 Cap. U. L. Rev. 445 (2013). [SSRN]
  • Direct to Consumer Genetic Testing: Learning from the Past and Looking Toward the Future, 67 Food and Drug L. J. 413 (2012). [SSRN]
  • SCIENCE:
  • Roles of Syntax Information in Directing Song Development in White-Crowned Sparrows, 124 J. Comp. Psychol. 117 (2010) (with Franz Goller and Gary Rose).
  • Tutor Model Syntax Influences the Syntactical and Phonological Structure of Crystallized Songs of White-Crowned Sparrows, 76 Animal Behav. 1815 (2008) (with Franz Goller and Gary Rose).
  • Species-Typical Songs in White-Crowned Sparrows Tutored with Phrase Pairs, 432 Nature 753 (2004) (with Alexander Baugh, Brenton Cooper, Franz Goller, Howard Gritton and Gary Rose).
  • Scholastic Model of PAC Nuclear Relaxation Cause by Defects Hopping on a Simple Cubic Lattice, 136 Hyperfine Interactions 627 (2001) (with Taylor Grow and William Evenson).