College of Law Launches Pro Bono Patent Program
The UA is one of only four law schools in the country to serve as a hub for the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office's pro bono program.

By James E. Rogers College of Law, UA James E. Rogers College of Law
March 22, 2017


The U.S. Patent and Trademark Office has designated the Intellectual Property & Entrepreneurship Clinic in the University of Arizona's James E. Rogers College of Law as Arizona's pro bono hub to serve inventors across the state in need of legal assistance.

The U.S. Patent and Trademark Office's pro bono program is designed to help financially under-resourced independent inventors, small businesses and startup companies obtain free legal counsel from local patent attorneys in filing patent applications and protecting their innovations. The UA is one of only four law schools in the country to serve as a hub for the program.

Under the UA initiative, dubbed the Arizona Public Patent Program, Arizona residents who want to file a patent application can apply with the Intellectual Property & Entrepreneurship Clinic for assistance, and the clinic will review their file and match qualifying clients with an Arizona attorney for pro bono legal services. The clinic — which doubled its caseload between spring and fall 2016 — also will offer attorneys the services of its students to assist on those cases.

The pro bono designation will allow UA law students to build closer relationships with intellectual property attorneys in the state, while Arizona residents will be able to get free help with a complex legal process that can cost up to $20,000. In 2015, nearly 3,000 patent applications were filed in Arizona. Before the UA law school earned the pro bono designation, Arizona residents were funneled to a California pro bono program.

New Program Lets Students Practice

The UA College of Law also has been admitted to the U.S Patent and Trademarks Office's Law School Certification Program, allowing intellectual property law students to practice before the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office (under the guidance of a faculty supervisor), file patent applications and negotiate directly with patent examiners — work that otherwise could not be done until graduating from law school and passing the patent bar exam.

"Patents are such technical documents in terms of how they are written and interpreted that it can be difficult to fully understand them based solely on classroom learning," said second-year UA law student Kimberly Soto, one of three Intellectual Property & Entrepreneurship Clinic students who in January became the first UA law students to ever receive temporary practice numbers to practice before the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office.

 

"This certification is especially helpful to hands-on learners such as myself, because it provides the opportunity to work through and understand the process of writing and filing a patent, from start to finish," Soto said.

 

Soto said that because this is a unique certification that allows her to build high-level transferable skills, she anticipates it will help her resume stand out to employers and introduce career opportunities that might not otherwise be available.

 

Clinic director and professor of practice Allan Sternstein agreed.

 

"These new opportunities will give Arizona law students even more exposure to the everyday work of intellectual property law, allowing them to enter the workforce with a more sophisticated background and experience that allows them to contribute on the job from day one," said Sternstein, who is also a partner at Lathrop & Gage, where he is assistant division chair of the Intellectual Property Division and head of intellectual property litigation.

 
Expanded Offerings

 

The U.S. Patent and Trademark Office designations come on the heels of expanded classroom and co-curricular offerings for the UA's intellectual property program.

 

Law students can now earn a certificate in intellectual property, and they also have access to two new courses: Patent Prosecution and Experiential Patent Litigation.

Longtime Tucson patent attorney Dale Regelman, a partner at Grossman, Tucker, Perrault & Pfleger, has joined the faculty as a part-time professor of practice to teach the Patent Prosecution class and serve as a faculty clinic supervisor for students in the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office Certification Program.

 

The College of Law also has authorized the formal establishment of a team for the Giles S. Rich IP Moot Court Competition, the oldest and most prestigious intellectual property-focused moot court competition and the only national competition specifically on patent law. The college competed for the first time in 2016 and earned a top-two finish at the Southwest Regional to advance to nationals.

 

Another new addition to the program is the student-run Arizona Law Journal of Emerging Technologies, due to publish its first issue this spring. Supervised by law professor Derek Bambauer, the journal is an interdisciplinary publication that collaborates with other UA units such as science, engineering and business.

 

"Intellectual property crosses the domains of law, science, business, technology, the arts and much more, so we're fortunate to be housed at a university with strengths in so many disciplines with which we can partner," Bambauer said. "Whether it's working with Tech Launch Arizona to file patents on behalf of University inventors or collaborating with Eller College of Management students on a journal article exploring trade secret policy, there are a lot of exciting opportunities for IP law students here."

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Tracy Mueller

UA James E. Rogers College of Law

520-621-1563

tracymueller@email.arizona.edu