Richard Wilder, JD '84

UNH School of Law Board of Trustees

Associate General Counsel for Global Health, the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation

Richard Wilder is responsible for addressing legal issues that arise in connection with the development of interventions in the field of global health – including drugs, vaccines and diagnostics.

Prior to his work with the Gates Foundation in Seattle, Wilder served as the associate general counsel for IP policy at Microsoft Corp., in Washington. Before that, he worked with the Gates Foundation as an outside counsel in his role as partner the Washington, DC, firm Sidley Austin LLP. At Sidley Austin, Wilder also worked with a number of other high-profile clients in shaping policy positions and strategic initiatives across a broad range of domestic, foreign, and international intellectual property issues.

Before that, Wilder was at the World Intellectual Property Organization in Geneva, Switzerland, where he served as the senior legal advisor in WIPO’s Industrial Property Division and later as the director of WIPO’s Global Intellectual Property Issues Division.

Prior to his work at WIPO, Wilder served as a senior legal advisor at the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office in Virginia. He also worked at the Washington, DC, firm Finnegan, Henderson, Farabow, Garrett & Dunnera, and served as a patent attorney at the Connecticut-based Perkin-Elmer Corp. He was also a visiting lecturer at the University of Malaya in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia.

Wilder is a member of the board of directors of Light Years IP; a member of the founding board of directors of Public Interest Intellectual Property Advisors; a member of the Task Force on Procurement for Global Fund to Fight AIDS, TB, and Malaria; a member of the Working Group on Health and the International Economy of the WHO Commission on Macroeconomics and Health; and an expert appointed to the WHO Intergovernmental Working Group on Public Health, Innovation and Intellectual Property.