UNH Today

UNH Law announced the creation of the Flexible Track Patent Law Program, to debut in the fall of 2016, which allows top professional organizations and firms to retain their highly-qualified patent agents and technical specialists by offering them the opportunity to earn their JD degree. As the only US News & World Report top 100 law school and Top 10 IP program in New England to offer a flexible schedule option to patent bar eligible professionals, the innovative program allows patent bar eligible students to attend UNH Law’s JD program two days per week while continuing to work. 

The program is designed to take advantage of UNH Law’s expansive curriculum in IP law, including more than two dozen course offerings. Successful candidates for admission must be working on at least a part-time basis in a patent-related job, in positions such as patent agent, technology specialist, scientist or engineer, and meet UNH Law’s admission requirements. Students will be able to complete the program in as little as three-and-a-half years, or they may take up to five years. Potential applicants to the program must have taken the LSAT and completed their bachelor’s degree before matriculation. Students should take the February or June LSAT to be considered for admission to the program.

Also beginning in Fall 2016, international students who hold an LLB or an LLM may apply to UNH Law’s JD program for admission as “Advanced Standing students.” Student who qualify for this program may transfer as many as 28 credits toward their JD — either from a law school outside the United States or from UNH Law’s LLM programs. This program allows international students to earn their JD in only two years, while also taking advantage of UNH Law’s excellent IP curriculum. Advanced Standing students may enroll in UNH Law’s clinics and legal residencies, and may participate in all aspects of the program of legal education, such as law review and moot court. Advanced Standing students must meet the JD program’s admissions standards, except that no LSAT is required. We hope that our international alumni will spread the word about this accelerated JD program. If you have any questions regarding the program, please contact UNH Law admissions at admissions@law.unh.edu or at 603-513-5300.

Franklin Pierce Center for Intellectual Property Faculty Highlights

Professor Jon Cavicchi spent a week at the USPTO in March at the Patent and Trademark Resource Center Program (PTRCP) 38th Annual Training Seminar. He participated in and learned about new patent and trademark searching technologies at the USPTO as well many other information and education related initiatives coming over the next several years. UNH Law is the PTRC for the state of New Hampshire. Professor Cavicchi also oversaw IDEA issues two and three, published this Spring and available online. IDEA held their Annual Notes Symposium in April. Eight IDEA editors participated. The award was presented to John Kind for his note on patent post invalidation reissue. Additionally, it is the 20th Anniversary of the founding of the UNH Law IP Library, the only academic IP Library in the Western Hemisphere. To commemorate the event, Professor Cavicchi wrote an article in IDEA chronicling the strategic plan of the founding fathers for the IP Library and IP Librarian - UNH School of Law IP Library: 20th Anniversary Reflection on the Only Academic IP Library in the United States. 

Roger Ford published “The Patent Spiral,” forthcoming in the University of Pennsylvania Law Review; “Unilateral Invasions of Privacy,” forthcoming in the Notre Dame Law Review, and “Secrets and Information Security in the Age of Sports Analytics,” forthcoming in The Oxford Handbook of American Sports Law. Ford also participated in a discussion forum hosted by the ACLU of New Hampshire on Privacy and Technology in the Granite State and moderated a panel on Protecting Secrets in the Sports & Entertainment Industries with the UNH Sports and Entertainment Law Society. In addition to presenting at Patent Conference 5 and the University of Chicago Legal Scholarship Workshop, Ford will present at the Junior Intellectual Property Scholars Association, the Works in Progress in Intellectual Property (WIPIP) Conference, and the Yale Information Society Project Conference on Unlocking the Black Box.

Christopher Frerking continued to lead one of the most respected and comprehensive patent law and practice programs in the country, with extensive course offerings in patent law, patent practice, patent litigation, technology licensing, and IP management. He also helped coordinate UNH Law's Intellectual Property Summer Insitute (IPSI), teaching Current Topics in Patent Practice and Patent Porftolio Management.

During the week of August 24, 2015, Dr. Stan Kowalski participated in the Heads of Intellectual Property Office Conference (HIPOC) for Countries in South Asia and Southeast Asia, at the World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO) Singapore Office. Attended by government officials from South and Southeast Asian countries, WIPO IP experts and noted authorities, the theme of the meeting was “Heads of IP Offices as Architects of an Innovation Ecosystem.” The meeting was organized by WIPO in cooperation with the Singapore Cooperation Program (SCP) and with the assistance of the Intellectual Property Office of Singapore (IPOS). It was part of the 5th Global Forum on IP (GFIP) 2015, a week-long event in Singapore.

During the fall 2015 semester, Professor Ashlyn Lembree presented to a Senior Engineering Project Class at UNH Durham. She also received an award from UNHInnovations for filing for and attaining registration of the various Rudman Center trademarks and generally assisting the program with its intellectual property development and protection. Over the summer of 2015, Lembree partnered with the U.S. Department of Commerce to present on U.S. intellectual property law at the American University of Armenia's Summer Intellectual Property Institute, sharing the stage with IP experts from around the world. This spring, Lembree and several students attended a Law School Clinical Program Conference at the USPTO in Alexandria, VA on April 6. Lembree also traveled with the GSR Patent Moot Court Competition team for a day of oral arguments in Boston in March, and, along with Alexandra Roberts and John Orcutt, took part in a Brand Valuation conference hosted at UNH Law on April 22. Lembree presented twice at the Transactional Clinical Conference in Baltimore on April 29, and presented at the May meeting of the NHBA IP Section, discussing copyright law, with particular focus on the Kirtsaeng v. Wiley case that was argued before the U.S. Supreme Court in April, 2016 on the issue of the standard for awarding attorneys’ fees in copyright infringement cases.

Professor Michael McCann, director of the Sports and Entertainment Law Institute, received a variety of recognition for his work, including being named by Forbes Magazine as the #1 Must-Follow for Sports Law in Forbes' "2015 Top 50 Must-Follow Sports Business Twitter Accounts." He was also honored by The Boston Globe as a Top 25 Best Twitter Follow in the Globe's "75 Best Twitter Follows in Boston Sports" and was a finalist for Bostinno's 50 on Fire Award for 2015 Sports and Fitness Award, in recognition of being "one of the city's hottest influencers, innovators and game-changers in the sports and fitness industry." McCann also signed a book contract with Oxford University Press to be the editor and an author of “The Oxford University Press Handbook of American Sports Law,” set to be published in 2017, and authored more than 40 articles for Sports Illustrated and SI.com. McCann’s Deflategate class, taught during the fall 2015 semester at UNH as part of the university’s Discovery Program, enrolled 75 UNH undergraduates and garnered nation-wide attention, attracting numerous TV show segments and national and regional news articles. Among McCann’s speaking engagements were lectures at Harvard Law School, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Boston College Carroll School of Management and CUNY Graduate School of Journalism in New York City, and he delivered keynote addresses at Middlesex Community College and the UNH Lakes Region Alumni Network Fall 2015 Reception.

Professor William Murphy presented at a conference at the University of Limerick, Ireland, on October 17, 2015, on the legal and ethical challenges facing the use of drones, from a U.S. perspective. He was also appointed an Adjunct Professor of Intellectual Property Law at the University of Limerick, Ireland, where during the spring semester, Murphy gave two open-to-the-public presentations as the featured speaker (one at the University of Limerick and one at University College Cork): "Valuing IP rights," at the University of Limerick Ireland on January 21, and "Why valuation of Intellectual Property Assets is a critical skill for information age lawyers," at the Information Technology Law Clinic, University College Cork School of Law, February 2.  Prior to that work, on December 4, 2015, Murphy presented “Unmanned Aerial Systems - an Industry Taking Off.  Finding the right regulatory balance” at the NH Bar day-long CLE on drone law and regulation. Murphy and professor John Orcutt were engaged by the Argentine Ministry of Science and Technology to join an international group of experts to give advice on “open innovation” strategies and how Argentina can effectively implement open innovation strategies into university and government research facilities. The final report (“Plataformas Abiertas para Tecnologías Estratégicas”) was presented to the President of Argentina, the Minister of Science, Technology and Innovation, the Secretary of Planning and Policies in Science , Technology and Innovation, and the Secretary of Studies and Planning in September.

Professor John Orcutt was a visiting lecturer at East China University of Political Science and Law in Shanghai, China, in December 2015, teaching Intellectual Property Valuation, Analytics, and Decision Making. In September 2015, Orcutt teamed up with the World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO) and the European Commission to be a presenter in Budapest, Hungary, teaching a course on intellectual property valuation in the Danube Innovation Partnership IP Commercialization and Technology Transfer Summer School. Orcutt also worked as a researcher and adviser with Ministerio de Ciencia, Tecnología e Innovación Productiva in Buenos Aires, Argentina, from April through September 2015, working with a team that advised the Argentine government on “open innovation” strategies and other techniques to increase innovation commercialization in Argentina. He also teamed up with Professor William Murphy to author the forthcoming “Intellectual Capital Readiness: The Use of Intangibles to Access Capital Markets” – An Introduction for Business and Investors on intellectual property valuation for the World Intellectual Property Organization.

Nicholson Price's article on biologic manufacturing, “Manufacturing Barriers to Biologics Competition and Innovation,” a project with Duke Law Professor Arti Rai published this spring in the Iowa Law Review, was the subject of a New York Times story on how high prices for expensive biologic drugs can be decreased. His article on the interaction between regulation and intellectual property (especially secrecy), “Regulating Secrecy,” will appear in the Washington Law Review, and another piece on intellectual property incentives for the use of big data in non-transparent medical algorithms, “Big Data, Patents, and the Future of Medicine,” appeared in the Cardozo Law Review.  His work on those algorithms more generally, “Black-Box Medicine,” was published last fall in the Harvard Journal of Law and Technology.  He presented work at UNH, Harvard, Yale, Stanford, Michigan, Northwestern, Vanderbilt, the University of Texas, George Washington, Boston University, the University of Washington, Arizona State, Saint Louis University, DePaul, and the University of Copenhagen. He continues his work studying innovation in the life sciences.

Alexandra Roberts was one of eight scholars selected to present a draft paper at Marquette Law's Third Annual Junior Faculty Works-in-Progress workshop in September 2015. She also published an editorial, "The Redskins' Latest Legal Defense is Surprisingly Clever,” at fortune.com in November 2015. Roberts also was quoted in an article about hashtags as trademarks, "US Court Adds Confusion To #Trademarks,” on the international IP law site Intellectual Property Watch in September 2015. In August 2015, she was a guest blogger for Eric Goldman’s blog, Technology and Law, with "Hashtags Are Not Trademarks—Eksouzian v. Albanese.” In 2016, Professor Roberts presented her draft paper, “Tagmarks,” at Works-in Progress in Intellectual Property (WIPIP) in Seattle, Wash., Internet Law Works-in-Progress in New York City, and to members of the New Hampshire Bar’s IP Section, as well as UNH Law students. She also accepted an offer from California Law Review to publish “Tagmarks” in 2017. She was featured in the Boston Globe’s business section in a piece called “Five Things You Should Know About Alexandra J. Roberts,” was quoted extensively in a Bostinno article about the use of the phrase “big game” versus “Super Bowl” and published what she believes is the first-ever legal scholarship on Buzzfeed, which was cited on Above the Law. She concluded the semester by presenting her work to professors and practitioners at the International Trademark Association (INTA) Annual Meeting in Orlando in May.

Under the supervision of Editor-in-Chief Samuel A. McMahon and guidance, management and mentorship of Jon R. Cavicchi, Professor of Legal Research and Intellectual Property Librarian, the flagship IP periodical IDEA has ascended to new levels of academic and scholarly excellence, strengthened its reputation among the top IP legal journals in the world and further established itself as a key asset of the Franklin Pierce Center for Intellectual Property. Indeed, the recent leadership of Ann Bartow, Professor of Law and Director of the Franklin Pierce Center for Intellectual Property, has reemphasized the importance of this renowned journal, with the renaming exemplifying the exciting and dynamic role it plays for UNH Law: IDEA: The Journal of the Franklin Pierce Center for Intellectual Property. IDEA, now even more accessible and available on Lexis, Westlaw, HeinOnline, EBSCO, as well as the open access award-winning IP Mall website, will continue as the global IP thought leader. IDEA Volume 56 clearly illustrates the excellence, importance, and dynamism of this journal. Specifically, IDEA, in its 56th volume, returned to its roots by publishing articles that address the "nuts and bolts" of patent law, ramifications of the enactment of the AIA, and interesting topics in IP law generally. With a refocus on quality rather than quantity, IDEA publishes traditional law reviews, e.g., obviousness issues in patent law, as well as non-traditional ones – articles that go beyond the explication of a single legal issue, but rather empirically and critically analyze important and emerging questions in IP law, e.g., trademark or copyright protection for cake designs. As a student-run publication, IDEA will also continue to hosts the Student Writing Competition, wherein IDEA's editors review law student notes on the topic of IP law, and select the top contenders for the competition. Winning notes, always an interesting assortment of essays addressing patent, copyright, trademark, and trade secret law, are eligible for publication in IDEA.