About

Thomas H. Rousse is an assistant professor of law at the University of Illinois, where he teaches and writes about intellectual property, contracts, and the law of creative industries, focusing on video games and new media. He uses survey experiments, data analysis, and fieldwork to study how creators, re-users, and audiences actually understand the rules governing creative work, and how creative communities regulate themselves where intellectual property law does not reach.

His scholarship has appeared in the Cardozo Arts & Entertainment Law Journal, the Iowa Law Review, and New Media & Society, among other venues. His most recent article reports a national survey experiment on how Creative Commons licensing shapes public judgments about copyright infringement. Current projects examine the assembly and collapse of intellectual property norms in independent game development, governance and licensing in music streaming, and questions of authorship raised by generative artificial intelligence.

During his studies for an MSc. in Games Analysis and Design at IT University of Copenhagen, he produced and designed the award-winning arcade game LAZA KNITEZ!! as part of the Glitchnap studio, and worked as a games critic and journalist, writing for Kill Screen and other outlets. While completing his dissertation, Rousse worked in intellectual property litigation at a firm in Portland, Oregon, on copyright, trademark, trade secret, and patent matters. Before joining Illinois, he worked as a sole practitioner in Louisiana advising clients on intellectual property strategy and land use disputes.

Education

PhD Northwestern University
JD Northwestern Pritzker School of Law
MSc IT University of Copenhagen
BA Northwestern University

Intellectual Property
Copyright
Trademark
Contracts
Video Game Law
Law and Technology

Selected Publications

Some Respect Reserved? Survey Experiment Insights on the Perception of Creative Commons and Copyright Infringement, 44 Cardozo Arts & Ent. L.J. 269 (2026).

The Privacy Hierarchy: Trade Secret and Fourth Amendment Expectations, 104 Iowa L. Rev. 1223 (2019) (with Matthew B. Kugler).

Content Analysis Across New Media Platforms: Methodological Considerations for Capturing Media-Rich Data, 20 New Media & Society 532 (2018) (with Lisa B. Hurwitz, Aubry L. Alvarez, Alexis R. Lauricella, Heather Montague, and Ellen Wartella).

Courses

Video Game Law
Contracts
Copyright and Trademark