Intellectual Property

About the Program

The innovations that produce economic growth and social progress first arise as ideas. The cost of bringing a new idea to market can be extraordinarily high, but the cost of copying that innovation is often very cheap. Intellectual property law tries to balance the incentive to create with society’s interest in spreading the benefits of innovation. The ability of digital technologies to copy and exploit the advantages of unique intellectual achievements presents new challenges for intellectual property law, making it one of the fastest-growing legal specialties in the United States. Virginia's IP program, combining a broad array of courses, hands-on clinics and professors who are focused on the real-world applications of their scholarship, offers students a unique foundation for exploring these challenges.

Academic Economic Espionage?

Elizabeth A. Rowe

In 2018 then-Attorney General Jeff Sessions announced that Chinese espionage was occurring in university research labs, and the Department of Justice...

Trade Secret Case Management Judicial Guide

Elizabeth A. Rowe

Peter S. Menell

David Almeling

...

As the knowledge economy expanded and concerns about trade secret misappropriation mounted in the digital age, federal policymakers undertook efforts...

Executive Decisions After Arthrex

John F. Duffy

Jennifer Mascott

Decisionmaking in the modern executive branch frequently rests on a convenient formalism. Ultimate power is typically vested in high-level “principal”...

eBay, Permanent Injunctions, and Trade Secrets

Elizabeth A. Rowe

This Article presents the first qualitative empirical review of permanent injunctions in trade secret cases. In addition, it explores the extent to...

Revisiting Trade Secret Extraterritoriality

Elizabeth A. Rowe

Giulia Farrior

This Article analyzes the extraterritorial provision in the Defend Trade Secrets Act (DTSA) and considers the arguments on both sides of the question...

Right on Time: First Possession in Property and Intellectual Property

Dotan Oliar

How should we allocate property rights in unowned tangible and intangible resources? This Article develops a model of original acquisition that draws...

Faculty Director

John F. Duffy

Samuel H. McCoy II Professor of Law

Resident Faculty

Aditya Bamzai

Administrative law, civil procedure, computer crime, federal courts, national security law

Served as an attorney-adviser in the Office of Legal Counsel at the Department of Justice
Practice appellate litigation privately and for DOJ's National Security Division
Clerked for Justice Antonin Scalia at the U.S. Supreme Court

Quinn Curtis

Corporations, securities and real estate law; consumer financial markets

Ph.D. in economics, Yale University
Prior to law school, worked as a software engineer for Microsoft
Recent scholarship focuses on how law can help reform 401(k) plans (Faculty Q&A)

Michal Barzuza

Corporate law and corporate finance

Received the John M. Olin Prize for outstanding S.J.D. dissertation in law and economics at Harvard Law School
Her article, "Market Segmentation: The Rise of Nevada as a Liability-Free Jurisdiction," was named among the 10 best corporate and securities law articles published in 2012, in an annual poll of corporate law professors conducted by Corporate Practice Commentator (Story)
Scholarship integrates law and finance (Scholarship Profile). Her article "What Happens in Nevada? Self-Selecting into Lax Law," was published in the Review of Financial Studies.

John F. Duffy

Intellectual property, patents, administrative law

Clerked for U.S. Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia and for Judge Stephen Williams of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit
Served as an attorney adviser in the Department of Justice’s Office of Legal Counsel
In the field of intellectual property, Duffy has been identified as one of the 25 most-influential people in the nation by The American Lawyer and one of the 50 most influential people in the world by the U.K. publication Managing Intellectual Property. He was named a legal “visionary” by the Legal Times in 2009 and has been profiled in Businessweek.

Julia D. Mahoney

Property, corporations and land conservation, nonprofit organizations

Has also taught at the University of Southern California Law School and the University of Chicago Law School
Scholarly articles include works on land preservation, eminent domain, health care reform and property rights in human biological materials
Practiced law at Wachtell, Lipton, Rosen & Katz

Thomas B. Nachbar

Constitutional law, antitrust and communications regulation, national security

Clerked for Judge Frank H. Easterbrook of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit
Practiced with what is now Mayer Brown in Chicago
Is a U.S. Army Reserve judge advocate, and was a principal editor and contributor for the first three editions of "The Rule of Law Handbook: A Practitioners’ Guide" (2007-09)
Before he went to law school, Nachbar spent five years as a systems analyst, working for both Andersen Consulting and Hughes Space and Communications.

Dotan Oliar

Intellectual property, law and economics

Clerked for the Israeli Supreme Court after earning his law degree at Tel Aviv University
Served as a fellow at Harvard’s Berkman Center for Internet & Society and Olin Center for Law and Economics
Has presented in several fora, including the Stanford/Yale Junior Faculty Forum; the annual meetings of the American, Canadian and European law and economics associations; and the intellectual property scholars conference. (Story)

Gil Siegal

Health law and bioethics

Lawrence B. Solum

Legal theory, constitutional theory, procedure, philosophy of law

His series of articles on constitutional originalism have shaped contemporary thinking about the debate between originalism and constitutional theory
Editor of Legal Theory Blog, an influential weblog that focuses on developments in contemporary normative and positive legal theory
Also works on problems of law and technology, including Internet governance, copyright policy and patent law

Edmund W. Kitch

Corporate law and securities, industrial and intellectual property, economic regulation and history

Was special assistant to the solicitor general of the United States and executive director of the Civil Aeronautics Board Committee on Procedural Reform
Was a member of the Committee on Public-Private Sector Interactions in Vaccine Innovation of the Institute of Medicine, National Academy of Sciences (1983-85)
Co-authored books include "Selected Statutes and International Agreements on Unfair Competition, Trademarks, Copyrights and Patents" and "Intellectual Property and Unfair Competition"

Danielle K. Citron

Privacy, First Amendment, feminism and the law, civil rights, administrative law

Named a 2019 MacArthur Fellow for her work on cyberstalking and intimate privacy
Adviser to then-California Attorney General Kamala Harris on privacy issues and a member of her Cyber Exploitation Task Force (2014-16)
Vice president of the Cyber Civil Rights Initiative, a nonprofit dedicated to protecting civil rights and liberties in a digital age
Gave TED talk “How Deepfakes Undermine Truth and Democracy” that has had over 1.9 million views
Clerked for U.S. District Court Judge Mary Johnson Lowe of the Southern District of New York

Rich Hynes

Bankruptcy and consumer finance law

Ph.D. in economics, University of Pennsylvania
Practiced law with Skadden Arps, Slate, Meagher & Flom in Los Angeles
Hynes focuses on parallel systems outside of bankruptcy that handle debtor-creditor relations, including the use of state courts to collect debts. (Scholarship Profile)

Elizabeth A. Rowe

Trade secret law, intellectual property, trademark law, patent law

Co-author of the first and leading U.S. casebook on trade secrets, in addition to a “Nutshell” treatise on trade secrets
Four of her articles have been named by Thomson Reuters Intellectual Property Review as among the best intellectual property articles of the year
Member of the American Law Institute and a member of the Leadership Council for The Sedona Conference Rowe, which conducts in-depth study in the areas of antitrust, complex litigation and intellectual property rights to provide nonpartisan consensus-based guidance to courts and attorneys
Former partner at the law firm of Hale and Dorr in Boston (now WilmerHale), where she practiced complex commercial litigation, including intellectual property and employment litigation

Other Faculty

William Charron

Robert J. Decker

Christopher Hockett

Rahul Keshap

Clare Lewis

Mike Lincoln

Rob C. Masri

Pamela Rosen

Amy Pruett

Curriculum

Virginia’s courses cover not just the basic forms of intellectual property — patent, copyright and trademark — and common issues of unfair competition, but also the challenges posed by international law and the Internet. Advanced colloquia in property rights offer students a chance to explore theoretical and practical issues.

The following is a list of courses offered during the current and two previous academic years. Numbers in parentheses indicate which academic year(s) the courses were offered, i.e., 2020-21 is coded (21), 2021-22 is coded (22) and 2022-23 is coded (23). (SC) stands for short course and (YR) stands for yearlong.

Antitrust in the Digital Economy (SC) (21,22)

Art Law (SC) (21,22)

Computational Text Analysis for Legal Practice (SC) (22)

Computer Crime Law (21,22)

Emerging Growth Companies and Venture Capital Financing: Principles and Practice (21,22,23)

Exercises in Rule Making - Society, Technology and the Law (SC) (22)

Internet Law (21,22,23)

Introduction to the Law of Trade Secrets (SC) (21,22)

Israeli Business Law and Innovation (SC) (23)

Law and Artificial Intelligence (23)

Law and Technology Colloquium (22,23)

Legal Practice and the Startup Company: An Inside Look (SC) (21,22,23)

Music Law: Analytical and Client Management Skills (SC) (21,22,23)

Patent Law (21,22,23)

Survey of Patent, Copyright, Trademark (21,22,23)

Trade Secret Law (23)

Trademark Law (23)

Clinics

Advanced Patent and Licensing Clinic (21,22,23)
Entrepreneurial Law Clinic (21,22,23)
Patent and Licensing Clinic (21,22,23)

Clinics

Being a good intellectual property lawyer requires adaptability in a dynamic field and an understanding of the realities of producing intellectual works.

Run in conjunction with the University of Virginia Patent Foundation, two patent clinics offer hands-on experience as students learn how and when to file patents and draft licensing agreements, deal with clients in the science and technology fields, and research and write about cutting-edge patent topics.

The first clinic involves practical training in patent drafting as well as the negotiation and drafting of patent and software license agreements. Students are assigned to one or more significant drafting and counseling projects and work in the office of the UVA Licensing & Ventures Group one day per week. Clinic participants may evaluate inventions and computer software for patentability and commercial value; counsel UVA faculty inventors regarding patentability, inventorship and the patenting process; prepare, file and prosecute provisional U.S. patent applications; and deal with patent examiners and research current issues in the fields of intellectual property and technology transfer. In a second clinic, the student may work exclusively with patent attorneys drafting, filing and prosecuting patent applications. Alternatively, the student may choose to work exclusively with licensing agents to draft license agreements, negotiate terms and conditions, and prepare confidentiality agreements and marketing documents.

Recent projects include:

A patent application for a class of metals capable of recovering their original shape and thickness after impact or crushing
Converting a provisional patent application on technology designed by a pharmacology professor that may halt the spread of cancerous cells
A brief on pharmaceutical patents in developing countries
A patent application for a battery-operated, handheld imaging device that promises to perform better than most ultrasound instruments
Prior art search and a draft patent application for a novel seatbelt-control system
Prior art review, market research and marketing for a neuro-stimulation technique for the treatment of epilepsy

Student Organizations

Law, Innovation, Security & Technology

LIST focuses on the novel legal, policy and business problems caused by the proliferation of emerging technologies, through speakers and other activities. The group also educates students and prepares them with practical skills; connects them with a network of mentors, experts and resources; and collaborates with the policy, business and technology communities. A recent networking event featured prominent attorneys from firms, U.S. attorneys’ offices, the Justice Department, the FBI and various public interest groups like the American Civil Liberties Union. More

Virginia Journal of Law & Technology (VJOLT)

Virginia Law's only e-journal, VJOLT provides a forum for students, professors and practitioners to discuss emerging issues at the intersection of law and technology. Recent issues have included articles on biotechnology, telecommunications, e-commerce, internet privacy and encryption. VJOLT publishes full-text articles directly to the Web. More

Virginia Law Emerging Companies and Venture Capital Society

ECVC is dedicated to supporting entrepreneurial initiatives across Grounds, connecting law students with students from other schools, and serving as a hub for those interested in entrepreneurship and entrepreneurial law. More

Other Organizations

The Virginia Law and Business Society explores the nexus between the worlds of law and business and sometimes features speakers on intellectual property topics. The JD/MBA Society serves as a focal point for communication between J.D. and M.B.A. students and sponsors events and activities that promote interaction among the Law and Business School communities.