Elizabeth A. Rowe

Elizabeth Rowe is an internationally renowned expert on trade secret law, intellectual property, trademark and patent law, and corporate espionage. She joined the UVA Law faculty in 2022 after serving as the Irving Cyphen Professor of Law and a Distinguished Teaching Scholar at the University of Florida Levin College of Law, where she was director of the program in intellectual property law. At UVA she is director, along with Danielle Citron, of the school’s LawTech Center.

She is the co-author of the first and leading U.S. casebook on trade secrets, in addition to a “Nutshell” treatise on trade secrets. Much of her research addresses the intersection of trade secrets with employment law and/or technology, as well as the interplay between intellectual property, government policy and innovation. Four of Rowe’s articles have been named by Thomson Reuters Intellectual Property Review as among the best intellectual property articles of the year: “Revisiting Trade Secret Extraterritoriality” (2019), “Unpacking Trade Secret Damages” (2017), “Trade Secrets, Trade, and Extraterritoriality” (2014) and “Trade Secret Litigation and Free Speech: Is it Time to Restrain the Plaintiffs?” (2009).

Her most recent co-authored book addresses trade secrecy in international transactions. The book has been praised for its “remarkable contribution to the understanding of the legal foundations and main features of trade secret law” of eight countries.

Rowe is a member of the American Law Institute and a member of the Leadership Council for The Sedona Conference, 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. She also is a fellow of the American Bar Foundation. Rowe is a frequent invited speaker at national conferences on intellectual property and also serves as an expert consultant in litigation. She is a 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. While in practice, she was selected as one of the top five up-and-coming attorneys in Massachusetts.

Rowe has been recognized by the University of Florida Research Foundation for her “outstanding research and scholarly achievements.” She was the first member of the Florida law faculty inducted into the Academy of Distinguished Teaching Scholars for her exceptional teaching and scholarship accomplishments. She has also received the Jack Wessel Research Excellence Award from the University of Florida’s Office of the Provost.