Student Writing Competitions

Guest post by Professor Michael Risch (Villanova University).

I’d like to thank Lisa and Camilla for the opportunity to write a short guest post. Ostensibly, this post is about the importance of writing competitions. If you are a professor, encourage your students to take part! If you are a student, don’t be afraid to submit your work. The advantages can include money, publication, and—at the very least—the satisfaction of working toward a scholarly goal.

But really, this is an opportunity to point out the work of three of my recent students (now graduates) who have had success in recent competitions:

Leah Mae Octavio: First Place, 2014 Pennsylvania Bar IP Section competition, for a paper discussing the effect of recent Supreme Court cases on personalized medicine. This is a paper after my own heart, examining the problems associated with delineating what is natural and what is inventive.

Michael Haviland: Second Place, 2014 Pennsylvania Bar IP Section competition, for a paper discussing the Kirby v. Marvel copyright dispute. This paper traces the fascinating history of the work made for hire doctrine.

Dan McManus: Second Place, 2013 Pennsylvania Bar IP Section competition, for a paper discussing ways to improve certainty in damage calculations. The proposals include the institution of baseball arbitration for all cases and declining royalties based on commercialization efforts.

Congratulations to these students. I’m shepping nachas as my parents like to say.  I encourage all students to take part in a competition or two, especially if they are writing a paper for a seminar anyway. At the very least, it is another item for the resume, and it can be worth much more.