Andrew Chin

Areas of Expertise

• Antitrust and Trade Regulation
• Biotechnology and the Law
• Computer Law
• Contracts
• Disability Law
• Economics and the Law
• Election Law
• Intellectual Property Law
• International Law
• Internet Law
• Legal Education
• Media Law
• Patent Law
• Philosophy and the Law
• Privacy Law
• Psychology and the Law
• Science and Technology Law
• Securities Law

Biography

Andrew Chin joined the faculty in 2001 after a previous career in theoretical computer science and combinatorial mathematics. He writes and/or teaches in various legal fields that interface with modern technology or call for quantitative methods and insights, including the laws of intellectual property, antitrust, cyberspace, artificial intelligence, privacy, democracy, and securities. His research methodologies range from data science and the design and analysis of algorithms to constitutional theory and the analytic philosophy of science and mathematics. In current work, he is exploring how patent laws relate to the neurodiversity of the inventive community. In recent years, Chin has partnered with Duke mathematicians in efforts to align the quantitative evidence presented in support of partisan gerrymandering challenges with rapidly shifting federal and state jurisprudence. His co-authors provided instrumental expert testimony in the state court challenge that resulted in the redrawing of North Carolina’s congressional districts in 2020. He was the author and attorney of record on amicus briefs filed on behalf of election law, scientific evidence, and empirical legal scholars in Rucho v. Common Cause and Gill v. Whitford. Chin’s scholarship on the calculation of short-swing insider trading liability has helped numerous plaintiffs’ attorneys maximize recoveries for corporations and shareholders. In earlier work, Chin authored a strategic disclosure of 11 million isolated DNA oligonucleotides that has been cited as prior art in more than 30 issued U.S. patents. In his previous career teaching computer science, mathematics and statistics at Oxford, King’s College London, the University of Texas at Austin, and Texas A&M University, Chin developed algorithms for fundamental computational models that continue to be the most efficient ones available. He developed and coined the first family of functions for locality-preserving hashing, a technique that has since given rise to a vibrant field of research with applications in machine learning, computer security, cloud computing and bioinformatics. Chin was president of the student government and later taught at the Lyndon B. Johnson School of Public Affairs at the University of Texas, where he organized a student movement that led to the creation of the Center for Asian American Studies. He was notes development editor of the Yale Law Journal as a student at Yale Law School, where he published a note and four other law review articles. He clerked for Judge Henry H. Kennedy Jr. of the United States District Court for the District of Columbia, and assisted Judge Thomas Penfield Jackson and his law clerks in United States v. Microsoft Corporation. Chin then practiced in the corporate and intellectual property departments in the Washington, D.C., office of Skadden, Arps, Slate, Meagher & Flom, LLP. A 1987 Rhodes Scholar, Chin has chaired the University’s nominating committee for the Rhodes Scholarships since 2002, during which nineteen UNC graduates have received the award.

Education

• J.D., Yale University (1998)
• Ph.D., Oxford University (1991)
• B.S., University of Texas at Austin (1987)

Selected Publications

The Signature of Gerrymandering in Rucho v. Common Cause (with G. Herschlag & J. Mattingly) 70 S.C. L. REV. 1241 (2019).
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Surgically Precise But Kinematically Abstract Patents, 55 HOUS. L. REV. 267 (2017).
Westlaw | Lexis/Nexis | Hein | BEPress | Document Link

The Learned Hand Unformula for Short-Swing Liability, 91 WASH. L REV. 1523 (2016).
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Teaching Patents as Real Options, 95 N.C. L. REV. 1433 (2017) (symposium).
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Ghost in the New Machine: How Alice Exposed Software Patenting's Category Mistake, 16 N.C. J.L. & TECH. 623 (2015).
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Differential Privacy as a Response to the Reidentification Threat: The Facebook Advertiser Case Study (A. Chin and A. Klinefelter), 90 N.C. L. REV. 1417 (2012).
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The Ontological Function of the Patent Document, 74 U. PITT. L. REV. 263 (2012).
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Artful Prior Art and the Quality of DNA Patents, 57 ALA. L. REV. 975 (2006).
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Decoding Microsoft: A First Principles Approach, 40 WAKE FOREST L. REV. 1 (2005).
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Antitrust Analysis in Software Product Markets: A First Principles Approach, 18 HARV. J.L. & TECH. 1 (2004).
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