William Mitchell College of Law
Building on a Tradition of Excellence
The Intellectual Property Institute at William Mitchell College of Law is engaged in the rigorous exploration of the balance between privately owned and publicly shared innovation to help ensure the best overall outcomes for our society.
Mitchell’s new Intellectual Property Institute has been featured prominently in several local publications, along with comments from Professor Ken Port, IP Institute director. “The institute is the latest move in the development of an IP curriculum that has placed William Mitchell at the top of academia in the field,” according to a Nov. 23 Minnesota Lawyer article. In a Nov. 26 article in the Minneapolis St.Paul Business Journal, Professor Port describes how the IP Institute will guide startups and inventors while educating students.
William Mitchell College of Law and the Intellectual Property Institute signed a memorandum of understanding (MOU) with the Global Institute of Intellectual Property (GIIP) in New Delhi, India, to cooperate in such areas as joint research/educational projects, joint conferences and symposia, a joint certificate courses and seminars and student and faculty exchanges.
The U.S. Senate is currently drafting legislation to reform the patent system from its “first-to-invent” system to the more globally used “first-to-file” system. In articles by Jacqueline Bell for the IP Log360 blog (published January 28 and January 29), Prof. Jay Erstling advocated for the “first-to-file” system, saying the “first-to-file” system is actually more beneficial to small businesses and universities which tend to be more “nimble,” but without the resources to “fully fertilize the invention” and thus benefitting from more timely protection.
Photo: Mitchell students Patrick Johnson (left) and Greg Geiser celebrate their second-place finish in first annual Minnesota Intellectual Property Law Association Cup Competition with MIPLA President Jeffery L. Cameron (center).
The Institute was represented pro bono in this matter by two prominent Eastern District of Virginia attorneys Charles Gorenstein and Michael K. Mutter from the firm of Birch, Stewart, Kolasch and Birch, LLP. The case is scheduled to be argued on February 8, 2008.
The pace of innovation is dramatically increasing throughout the world, making intellectual property law a vital component in protecting the creative process as well as the means by which innovation is used and distributed. By strengthening innovators’ rights, IP law can actually stimulate creativity, whether it’s developing computer software, producing literary works, writing music, generating processes or equipment for commercial use, or any of a wide variety of other applications. Intellectual property permeates everybody’s life on a daily basis.
As a result, we live in a world where there’s a constant struggle between determining what knowledge is privately owned and what is accessible to the public. IP law is the tool by which a balance can be established and maintained between the two, which is vitally important to society as a whole.
At a time when innovation is dramatically increasing worldwide, the Intellectual Property Institute at William Mitchell College of Law is assuming a leadership role in fostering and protecting innovation through the educational, research, and service initiatives that have made IP one of the top academic areas at the college.
William Mitchell is a leader in intellectual property education, with 17 courses, four full-time faculty, and adjuncts from the top intellectual property firms in the Twin Cities.
With a nationally and internationally recognized faculty, the institute advances the college’s IP program, which features an extensive, broad-based curriculum focused on patent, trademark, and copyright law. For students, the institute bridges the gap between legal theory and practice, providing them valuable opportunities to develop practical skills in a variety of specialized areas.