Eric Goldman, the director of Santa Clara University School of Law’s High Tech Law Institute, has been awarded the IP Vanguard Award by the State Bar of California’s Intellectual Property Law Section, for outstanding contribution to the field of intellectual-property law.

Since 2009, the executive committee of the IP Law Section has awarded IP Vanguard awards to outstanding legal professionals in four categories (in-house counsel; private practice; academic or public policy; and judicial) who are “spearheading new developments in the world of intellectual property,” according to the committee.

Academics chosen for the award are those who are “substantially involved in providing education on topics involving or affecting intellectual property law” and have had a significant impact on IP law with “demonstrated outstanding teaching ability” and leadership.

Santa Clara Law Dean Donald Polden called Goldman “a marvelous teacher, a highly productive scholar who publishes pertinent ideas and information in a variety of media and formats, and a creative thinker on technology law and policy.”

Among his contributions to IP law in the past year, Goldman published an article on different legal regimes governing information about reputation; spoke at the Russian government’s invitation on digital copyright issues at a conference in St. Petersburg, Russia; helped gain public access to key filings in Rosetta Stone v. Google (a trademark lawsuit over keyword advertising) and worked to highlight how some doctors misuse copyright law to control patients’ reviews of their doctors. This summer, he launched a co-authored casebook on advertising and marketing law, the first of its kind for the law school market.

In the past 12 months, he gave over 30 public talks and made over 250 media appearances on issues related to high-tech law. And his Technology & Marketing Law Blog, read by thousands of readers a day, has for the past two years been listed as one of the top 100 legal “blawgs” by the ABA Journal.

“We are very pleased for Eric and proud that his work at Santa Clara’s law school is being recognized by this prestigious award,” said Polden. “His work has exerted a substantial and positive influence on his students, lawyers and intellectual property policy makers.”

The other honorees this year are U.S. Ninth Circuit Court Chief Judge Alex Kozinski; Adrian Pruetz, of the Pruetz Law Group; and Jay Monahan, deputy general counsel of Zynga.

Goldman will receive his award at a lunch on Nov. 11 in Dana Point in Southern California.