Thursday, February 7, 2013

Who is teaching patent law? (Not Yale)

By "who" I mean both which schools and which professors. This is not a ranking of the best patent law programs—I was just curious about what patent classes were offered at the top USN schools, which might be of interest to students evaluating schools or to schools considering what courses to offer. Below are schools in order of the 2012 USN rankings, and classes with "patent" in the title from the 2012-13 course catalogs. Professors who have tenured or tenure-track positions at the listed school are in bold. If I found a page listing the school's IP faculty, the school name links to it.
  1. Yale: No patent classes offered.
  2. Stanford: Merges (Patents), Lemley (Adv. Patents), Schox (Prosecution), Galloway (Litig.)
  3. Harvard: Roin (Patents), Porcelli (Litig.)
  4. Columbia: Edgar (Patents), Long (Patents), Edgar/Long/Lebowitz/Sobel (Adv. Patents), Groombridge/DeMasi (Litig.)
  5. Chicago: Masur (Patents)
  6. NYU: Dreyfuss (Patents), Martone (Litig.), Weiswasser/Groombridge (Bio-Tech Patents)
  7. Berkeley: Merges (Patents), Schallop (Prosecution), Bobrow (Litig.)
  8. Penn: Wagner (Patents & Appellate Patent Advocacy), Jordan/Pearson (Litig.)
  9. UVa: Bagley (Patents & Int'l Patents), Duffy (Adv. Patents), Decker/Sparks (Patent & Licensing)
  10. Michigan: Eisenberg (Patents I), Radin (Patents II), Grauer (Litig.)
  11. Duke: Rai (Patent Law and Policy)
  12. Northwestern: Baniak/Lee (Patents), Genin/Hetz (Prosecution)
  13. Georgetown: Thomas (Patents & Advanced Patents), Freed/Micallef (Patents), Altherr/Meeker/Potenza/Roth (Patent Trials), Feldstein/Tridico (Prosecution)
  14. Cornell: Liivak (Patents), Dabney (Topics in Patent Practice)
  15. UCLA: Lichtman (Patents), Heinrich/Iancu (Patent Intensive)
  16. UT-Austin: Golden (Patents), Wille (Adv. Patents), Wilson/Krawzsenek (Prosecution)
  17. Vanderbilt: Seymore (Patents & Adv. Patents), Patterson (Prosecution)
  18. USC: Melnik (Patents)
  19. Minnesota: Cotter (Patents & Adv. Patents), Sieffert/Shumaker (Prosecution), Gross (Litig.), Ellinger (Biotech Patents)
  20. GW: Kieff (Patents), Rader/Whealan (Patents), Barufka/Toering (Patent Practice), McKelvie/Hopenfeld/West (Patent Enforcement), Dunner (Patent Appellate Practice), Adelman (Int'l Patents), Adelman/Straus (Chem & Biotech Patent Law), Etienne-Cummings/Maurer/Underhill (Patent Enforcement), Smith/Dzwonczyk (Int'l Patent Law)
  21. UWash: Takenaka (Adv. Patents), Carlson/Hermanns (Prosecution)
  22. Notre Dame: McKenna (Patents), Irwin (Litig.)
  23. Wash U: Collins (Patents & Adv. Patents), Warren/Wheelock/Upchurch (Patent Drafting)
  24. Emory: Holbrook (Patents), Vertinsky (Patent Seminar), Morris (Litig.)
  25. Washington & Lee: Stillman (Litig.), basic Patents course offered but not 2012-13
Note that there is only one school on this list that did not offer any patent-specific classes—I don't know when was the last time (if ever) that Yale offered a patent-specific class (as opposed to a general IP class), but it was at least before 2008-09. That said, YLS was still a fantastic place to go to law school, and it is possible to learn a fair amount about patents if you try—feel free to email me if you are interested in patents and considering YLS. Also email me with corrections!