Why apply to the University of New Hampshire School of Law
The University of New Hampshire School of Law faculty are often asked by colleagues in academia and practice how it is that a small law school in New Hampshire can compete with the top intellectual property institutions with major budgets, large endowments, and university resources.
One part of the answer is the unique history of innovative IP education at the University of New Hampshire School of Law that has led to success of our graduates in all areas of endeavor in almost one hundred countries worldwide.
The second part of the answer is the outstanding global interdisciplinary curriculum which comes with opportunities such as: externships, clinics, research, writing, and summer employment. This outstanding curriculum is taught by one of the largest full-time experienced IP faculty in any law school in the United States. UNH School of Law's IP program has consistently been ranked as one of the top IP programs in the world for the past seventeen years.
UNH School of Law Faculty
Franklin Pierce Law Center was founded by a patent lawyer who believed that the IP Faculty needed to have the "three legs of a solid stool": law firm attorneys, corporate counsel, and patent examiners. The original IP Faculty led the first patent drafting and prosecution program in the United States when only a handful of schools offered courses solely in patent law. Patent practice was learned on the job.
During the 1980s the field of IP expanded to include trademarks, copyrights, trade secrets as well as the management, monetization and commercialization of IP assets and other intellectual capital. UNH School of Law IP faculty was in the lead studying, developing and teaching innovative IP courses. UNH School of Law IP faculty members strongly integrate law and technology, business, science, economics, social justice and public interest. The IP Faculty constantly analyze the full range of commercial transactions that integrate IP assets. The Faculty also teaches the criminal protection and enforcement of IP - one of the fastest growing areas of IP practice.
Now the University of New Hampshire School of Law has one of the largest full time resident IP faculties in the United States, supplemented by a substantial influential contingent of domestic and foreign adjuncts. The University of New Hampshire School of Law has continuously followed a strategic plan to attract high profile global IP leaders to teach courses both during the academic year as well as during the innovative Intellectual Property Summer Institute.
IP faculty are committed to educating students and working toward the success of students in the global IP professional arena. They participate in a wide range of student-oriented activities including speaking at student events, acting as moot court judges, mentoring law review editors and joining in fellowship at the many student social and ethnic activities.
The University of New Hampshire School of Law IP faculty have extensive and diverse experience:
- Five IP faculty are members of the United States Patent Bar
- Four IP faculty practiced trademark law in IP law firms
- Our IP faculty members have prosecuted IP, litigated IP and managed IP
- One IP faculty member was an examiner at the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office
- One IP faculty member is a well known author practicing in a national patent law firm
- One IP faculty member was corporate counsel at a giant pharmaceutical department
- One IP faculty member was IP counsel for the Massachusetts Institute of Technology
- One IP faculty member, a Cornell Ph.D. biotechnology graduate and prolific author, was the principle investigator in the world famous "golden rice" freedom to operate patent landscape analysis
- One IP faculty member is a pioneering innovator in IP research tools and strategies, writing and teaching in the field of patent informatics
Reputation
From 1992 through 2009 (17 year period), Franklin Pierce Law Center has consistently ranked within the top seven IP law programs in the country. During the period of 1992 through 2003, Franklin Pierce Law Center was ranked consistently within the top five IP law programs in the country. In that same period, from 1997 through 1999, Franklin Pierce Law Center was ranked as the #1 IP law program. In both the 2004 and 2006 rankings, Franklin Pierce Law Center fell to its lowest rank of seventh. As of 2009, Franklin Pierce Law Center has jumped back up to the sixth position in the rankings.
Additionally, Franklin Pierce Law Center is only one of two schools to be included in every US News IP ranking from 1992 through 2009. Franklin Pierce Law Center has ranked as the #1 IP law program 3 times, and Columbia University has ranked #1 once.
IP Law Library
The Intellectual Property Library at UNH School of Law is the only academic IP Library in the Western Hemisphere. The IP Library maintains an extensive collection covering United States, foreign, and international intellectual property titles. Library resources include all major formats. The collection spans three hundred years of intellectual property scholarship, and includes scholarly, practice, and news materials. It is a depository of publications by the World Intellectual Property Organization. The University of New Hampshire School of Law also receives all significant publications of the Patent and Trademark and Copyright Offices as a GPO Depository Library.
The virtual IP Library includes the award-winning IP Mall website, which provides an invaluable online resource for intellectual property research and scholarship, as well as current news and legal developments in intellectual property law. This site is visited millions of times a year.
The IP Library is administered by the only law school in the United States with an IP Professor specializing in IP research tools and strategies as well as patent informatics. Professor Jon Cavicchi is the Intellectual Property Librarian who teaches numerous IP research courses as well as acting as Director of Research of the International Technology Transfer Institute.
Innovative IP Clinics Serving Live Clients
Since Franklin Pierce Law Center was founded it has continuously offered IP clinics where students work with IP professor attorneys. These clinics have served a wide range of clients over the past thirty five years, including universities, corporations, scientists and other small inventors of many types. These clinics operated long before the legal profession and educators put any value on practical skills training.
That changed when the McCrate Report was issued in l992, which conceptualized law training as an educational continuum involving specific responsibilities on the part of both law schools and the practicing profession. The McCrate Report identified ten basic lawyer skills and four fundamental values, it recommended that legal education should be primarily responsible for teaching, leaving it to mentors in the bar to hone these skills and reinforce these values during the early years of practice.
Ivy League schools such as Harvard Law began to offer clinical education several decades after the University of New Hampshire School of Law had set the example for legal education.
Curriculum
Patent Law
Among the possible types of IP careers, patent law is unique. The value of patents, whether covering the equivalent of a square inch of Arctic tundra or a square mile of Manhattan, is primarily determined by the scope of claims granted by the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office (PTO). Narrow claims are of little use if they can be evaded, but claims that are too broad are invalid. Obtaining adequate claims is thus important work, but a PTO bar examination is needed. Candidates also must have acceptable technical credentials before they can sit for that exam.
Except for practicing before the PTO, the patent bar is not required. Still, opportunities to negotiate and draft licenses, sue infringers, and advise on ways to protect trade secrets, not to mention file appeals from the PTO, are limited for anyone who has not passed the PTO exam.
Patent practice opportunities are also and perhaps more, influenced by particular technical backgrounds. Chemical, computer and electrical engineers and Ph.D.s in the biological sciences are in high demand. Students without those backgrounds should investigate their employment prospects before making major investments in patent courses, much less trying to sit for the PTO exam.
However, anyone's prospects can be strengthened by the solid set of courses that uniquely qualify UNH School of Law graduates. Ones of particular interest include Patent Law, Patent Litigation and Patent Practice I and II. Some of these courses also satisfy the Upper Level Writing requirement.
Additional important electives would include Antitrust, International and Comparative Patent Law, IP Management, Global IP Management, Non–Profit Technology Transfer, Technology Licensing and World Trade and World IP Law and Institutions. Students may also be interested in Law and Biotechnology. Students should be able to take all of those courses, Fundamentals of IP, all bar courses mentioned earlier, as well as IP–related Administrative Process and other required courses and still graduate with approximately 85 credits.
Depending on backgrounds, students may also find Copyright Law, for example, helpful. Students who elect to graduate with more than the minimum credit requirement would naturally have little difficulty electing several such courses, as well as advanced business and litigation courses, clinics, externships, moot court and journals.
Trademark Law
Because source identifiers are hard to avoid, trademark law offers numerous career opportunities. Many organizations possess trade secrets, patents and copyrights, but most (whether charitable or commercial) also need to protect their unique identities. Further, patents and copyrights expire, and trade secrets can become common knowledge, but marks often become only more valuable over time.
Many lawyers are needed to acquire and maintain PTO and, to a lesser extent, state trademark registrations. They also litigate to prevent the use of confusingly similar marks, draft licenses, pursue cyber squatters and counterfeiters, and educate the media and the public on the correct use of marks. Trademark lawyers also increasingly register and otherwise protect domain names.
A student who has taken Fundamentals of IP will find Trademarks and Deceptive Practices (3 credits; 2 in Summer) to lay the foundation for International and Comparative Trademark Law, Inter Partes Practice before the USPTO, Advanced Topics in Trademark Law and Federal Trademark and Registration Practice.
Other courses of potential interest include Antitrust, Advanced Licensing Institute, Comparative IP for the Information Age, Cross Cultural Negotiations for IP Disputes, Current Issues in Information Technology, Intellectual Property and Transaction Clinic, IP Management, Introduction to Chinese IP Law, Technology Licensing, Valuation of IP, World Trade and World IP Law and Institutions. A few courses are offered only in China or Ireland, but most are available in Concord, and several are offered in both fall and spring semesters.
Students interested in trademarks can easily fit all of those courses into their schedules. Those opting to graduate with more than 85 credits could also choose among, for example, advanced business and litigation courses relevant to their backgrounds and career objectives. Such students will also have expanded opportunities to differentiate themselves by participating in externships, moot court and journals.
Copyright Law
Expanding duplication and distribution methods – especially ones related to digital technology and online transmission – have generated considerable public attention and alerted most people to the importance of copyright protection. Copyright protects works ranging from books, music, and motion pictures to computer software from unauthorized copying, adaptation, distribution, and public performance.
Unlike patent law, relatively few lawyers specialize in copyright licensing and infringement litigation. Yet, copyright law potentially affects many individuals and businesses, as well as nonprofit organizations such as schools. Further, many law firms and corporations maintain both IP litigation and transactional practices.
Because, as with trademarks, no particular background is needed for copyright practice, students seeking work in that area should take advantage of any pre–law experience, get a good grounding in business law and take full advantage of UNH School of Law's offerings. Both Fundamentals of IP and Copyright Law (3 credits; 2 in Summer) lay the foundation for electives such as International and Comparative Copyright Law, Managing Knowledge Assets in the University, Nonprofit Technology Transfer, and Copyright Licensing. Those courses also complement the Technology Licensing and Advanced Licensing Institute courses.
Suggestions at the end of the prior trademark discussion as well as most of the following discussion of Cyberlaw, sports and entertainment law also warrant the attention of students wishing to study copyright law.
Related Areas: Cyberlaw, Entertainment and Sports
The advent of the so–called "Information Age" and the "Digital Economy" has created new career opportunities for IP lawyers. Although, unlike patent law, it is not currently essential to have taken courses in Cyberlaw or e–Commerce to practice in these areas, students who are interested in pursuing a career doing such work are strongly advised to take those courses. Even if a student has no definite plan to become a technology lawyer, the nature of IP practice is such that some knowledge in these cutting–edge fields, coupled with a solid grounding in traditional IP, would provide the student with a broad and flexible background in modern IP law and practice.
Courses in these areas currently offered by UNH School of Law include Cybercrime, Current Issues in InfoTech and IP, and e–Commerce and the Law. Students interested in technology and Cyberlaw should also consider at least one licensing course and relevant business law courses.
Several other practice areas straddle or closely parallel copyrights and trademarks. Emerging rights of publicity, for example, discussed from differing perspectives in Fundamentals of IP and several other courses, enable well–known entertainers and sports stars to sometimes earn more from endorsements than from activities that made them famous.
Merchandising is also big business. Thus, for example, besides negotiating broadcast rights for competitive events, sports organizations generate important income by licensing use of their names and logos. In the entertainment industry, it has been noted that the advertising budget for licensed items based on Jurassic Park was three times the advertising budget for the movie itself.
Students with strong interests in such areas should select both copyright– and trademark–related courses. Beyond the basic courses, they should be alert to the availability of courses such as Sports Law, as well as to employment, family, and tax law.
Whatever their specific interest in IP, students should have no difficulty putting fifteen (15) or more immediately relevant credits on their transcripts. And those can be supplemented, as previously mentioned, with work on journals, moot courts, externships and the like.
Generic advice is necessarily limited by diversity in pre–law employment and education, as well as by diversity in career and other objectives. Students determined to get the most from UNH School of Law's IP offerings should consult as many sources as possible. Among these are Career Services, practicing lawyers, and faculty who teach courses being considered, as well as students who have already completed them. There are also numerous online resources offering information about IP organizations, jobs and placements.
Joining the Student IP Law Association or the local student chapter of the Licensing Executives Society can also be useful for meeting and exchanging ideas and information with classmates and more senior students. Taking an active role in such organizations also enhances opportunities to network with, and learn from, practicing attorneys.
Depending on individual interests, the American Bar Association IP Section, the American Intellectual Property Law Association, the Copyright Society, the Federal Circuit Bar Association, and the International Trademark Association should all be considered with such ends in mind. Most, if not all, professional organizations have reduced rates for students. Some have job fairs and otherwise assist in finding jobs. All host meetings where students can verify their competence as well as engage in networking. Finally, electronic and print publications of professional organizations also convey a good sense of topics, cases and issues of current interest to IP practitioners – things very helpful to know before sending out resumes or when preparing for job interviews.
