McManis: Director of new program
By Ann Nicholson
March 9, 2001
Recognizing the exponential growth in legal issues related to new technologies from cyberspace to biotechnology, the School of Law is launching a new Master of Laws (LL.M.) Program in Intellectual Property and Technology Law.
"The new master's degree program is designed to provide graduates of both U.S. and international law schools with specialized, advanced study and practical skills training in this increasingly complex area of the law," said Joel Seligman, J.D., law school dean and the Ethan A. H. Shepley University Professor. "The program builds on our strengths in intellectual property law and our successful LL.M. programs in tax and for international students."
McManis: Director of new program |
The American Bar Association recently granted permission for the intellectual property program, one of only a half-dozen among the 183 accredited law schools in the U.S. The law school officially will inaugurate the program at a major conference on "Intellectual Property, Digital Technology and Electronic Commerce" on April 6-7.
"The explosion of new technologies driving the U.S. and global economies --combined with a dramatic rise in the importance of intellectual property --presents significant new challenges to the legal profession," said Charles R. McManis, J.D., professor of law and director of the new LL.M. program. "Today's easy dissemination of information globally also underlines the need to increase intellectual property protections and to address such complex issues across different legal cultures."
Intellectual property law encompasses protections for "creations of the mind," ranging from patents for inventions to copyrights for literary and artistic works to trademarks associated with commercial products to trade secret protections for manufacturing processes or product formulas. In today's high-tech world, intellectual property issues are becoming commonplace with recent headlines highlighting the Napster dispute over music that can be downloaded over the Internet, ongoing conflicts over Internet domain names and battles over the application of techniques for genetically engineering crops.
Beginning this fall, the new LL.M. program will offer introductory courses and advanced seminars in intellectual property law as well as in a wide range of related topics including antitrust, international investment law, entertainment law, sports law, bioethics, and legal issues stemming from the human genome project. Students in the juris doctor (J.D.) program will also be able to take advantage of these expanded course offerings.
Dorsey D. Ellis Jr., J.D., chair of the advisory board for the new program and the William R. Orthwein Distinguished Professor of Law, noted that a number of factors will strengthen the new LL.M.'s offerings.
"The new LL.M. program will capitalize on the University's prominence in information and biotechnology, the region's unique strengths in biotechnology, and the law school's own teaching and scholarly expertise in international and comparative law and in intellectual property law," Ellis said.
The program's 26-member advisory board is made up of attorneys at the World Intellectual Property Organization, at the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office and practicing intellectual property law at leading law firms and businesses, both in St. Louis and nationally.
The master's degree courses will be taught by law school faculty who are nationally and internationally recognized in their respective fields and adjunct professors, many of whom also serve on the advisory board. Patent law expert F. Scott Kieff, J.D., visiting assistant professor at Northwestern University School of Law and co-author of the casebook and treatise "Principles of Patent Law," also will join the Washington University law school faculty this fall and teach in the LL.M. program.
Interdisciplinary opportunities will abound between the new intellectual property program and the School of Medicine's Genome Sequencing Center and Center for Computational Biology; School of Engineering and Applied Science's Center for Biocybernetics and Intelligence Systems and its Institute of Biological and Medical Engineering; and the Philosophy-Neurosciences-Psychology Program in Arts & Sciences, Ellis said.
Additionally, the law school's Institute for Global Legal Studies and Center for Interdisciplinary Studies will include intellectual property topics among their areas of scholarly interest.
Businesses are increasingly dealing with intellectual property issues, demonstrating the substantial need for lawyers trained in this area, McManis said. For example, the St. Louis region is experiencing tremendous growth in biotechnology research and development through the Missouri Botanical Garden, Monsanto/Pharmacia, the Donald Danforth Plant Science Center and several new corporate incubators for biotechnology firms. The law school's new intellectual property program will help provide the legal expertise needed to make St. Louis a thriving center of biotechnology, McManis said.
At the same time, foreign countries are adopting patent and trademark protections at unprecedented levels, creating a demand for lawyers who understand international aspects of the field. The intellectual property program will augment the school's already highly respected advanced degree training in U.S. law for international students, Ellis said.
Kieff, who has extensive experience practicing in the field of intellectual property law, noted that the "rapidly changing landscape of both law and technology require any lawyer --whether IP specialist or not --to maintain up-to-date training.
"An LL.M. in intellectual property law from Washington University will not only help the savvy IP specialist to proudly display newly minted ability with cutting-edge issues, but also will help the general lawyer better advise clients about the latest trends impacting the most significant portion of the asset base for most clients," Kieff said.
For more information on the new program or the April 6-7 conference, visit the law school's Web site at http://ls.wustl.edu.
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