Thomas G. Field, Jr.
Emeritus and Visiting Professor of Law
University of New Hampshire School of Law
2 White Street
Concord, NH 03301
Phone: (603) 513-5147
fax: (603) 225-9647
tom.field@law.unh.edu

C.V. | IP Basics |  Publications

A.B. (Chemistry), J.D., West Virginia University
LL.M. (Trade Regulation), New York University

Professor Field retired at the end of the 2011-12 academic year, but during 2012-13, he will teach two sections of Fundamentals of IP. Previously, he taught a wide variety of other courses.

Before helping launch the Franklin Pierce Law Center in 1973, Professor Field taught and practiced briefly in Ohio. He also examined patents (alkene polymers). Being interested in gardening, he found one for mulching film particularly interesting.

Field is admitted to several bars. He does not practice, but he has filed, solo and with others, several amicus briefs with the Federal Circuit and the Supreme Court of the United States. He has also served as an expert witness in a variety of IP cases and as a third party neutral. As the consumer-advocate on a Chrysler warranty arbitration panel for four years, he helped resolve more than 150 disputes. He has also arbitrated and mediated copyright and trademark disputes under the aegis of the American Arbitration Association.

More than 150,000 of his IP booklets for nonlawyers were distributed before the advent of the web; now such information is more readily kept current and available online in his IP Basics pages. Also, his casebooks, Fundamentals of Intellectual Property and Introduction of Administrative Process, are available as Adobe Acrobat files for royalty-free non-commercial reproduction and use. Bound copies of Fundamentals of Intellectual Property are also available.

Five of his computer-assisted instruction (CAI) exercises exploring arbitration fundamentals have, since 1988, been distributed by the Center for Computer Assisted Legal Instruction. Those exercises were originally prepared using software for authoring CAI that won Field first prize in a 1989 non-commercial programming contest sponsored by the Apple Programmers and Developers Association.

Professor Field hosts and moderates an intellectual property (IP) professors' listserv and has been active on other professional and academic email lists. For several years, he was also Franklin Pierce Law Center's (content) webmaster.

He recently served a term on the Editorial Advisory Board of the AIPLA Quarterly Journal and continues as a charter member of the Editorial Advisory Board of the U.S. Patents Quarterly (BNA). Field has also been a regular op-ed columnist ("7+ on the IP Richter Scale") for ipFrontline since 2004; his columns, now numbering over seventy-five, are linked from a biographical page. Several of Field's larger recent papers and two open source casebooks are posted to the Social Science Research Network (SSRN). Among nearly 185,000 SSRN authors, he ranks within the top 2% based on downloads of his papers.

Conferences Field has chaired or co-chaired have, since 1976, explored wide-ranging law/science and technology topics. Two involved public participation in risk management and two involved the human genome project. One led to his founding RISK, a refereed, interdisciplinary quarterly (the RISK archives can be found on the IP Mall).

Personal notes

After short stints as a quality control technician and analytical chemist, I decided to attend law school. Colleagues from that time were, at best, highly skeptical, but, as is true of many who have gone to law from non-traditional backgrounds, I enjoy an exciting career.

In that respect, I am fortunate to have spent most of it where I have been encouraged to pursue issues at the boundaries of law and technology. I am also fortunate to enjoy interaction with students who have pursued a variety of careers, technical and nontechnical, drawn not only from every state but also from every continent.

It has been very satisfying to have helped develop outstanding IP programs in which students can acquire, within three years, many of the skills and more substantive knowledge than I did in five or six.

Those considering an IP career should see my discussions for people with and without technical backrounds. I am happy to hear from people who share my varied interests.

Tom Field