Duration: Full-year clinic

Credits: 8 credits (4 credits per semester/letter grade)

The Intellectual Property Clinic provides students in their last two (2) years of law school the opportunity to counsel clients on and extensive range of intellectual property issues, including copyright, patent, trademark, trade secret, privacy, and First Amendment law. Clients of the clinic include:

• Artists, authors, designers, and musicians who want to protect their creative efforts;
• Innovators who seek to protect their inventions;
• Entrepreneurs, established corporations, and nonprofit organizations with trademark, trade secret, trade dress, contracting, and licensing needs; and
• Individuals and businesses hoping to acquire or assign intellectual property rights.

Clinic students take primary responsibility for all client matters, under the close supervision of experienced practitioners. Students can expect to gain hands-on experience in conducting interviews, mediating disputes, performing legal research, drafting both transactional and litigation documents, and interacting with the United States Copyright Office and the United States Patent and Trademark Office. Specific tasks may include counseling clients on strategies for identifying and safeguarding protectable information, performing prior art searches, drafting and filingprovisional and non-provisional patent applications, registering copyrights and trademarks, negotiating licenses, drafting nondisclosure agreements, prosecuting and defending infringement claims, and engaging in legislative and administrative advocacy.

Students enrolled in the Clinic are required to attend a weekly seminar covering substantive areas of intellectual property law, emerging topics in intellectual property law policy, basic lawyering skills, and professional responsibility. The Clinic seminar also provides an opportunity to reflect upon and share newly acquired techniques and best practices of client representation, as well as any ethical issues that arise during the Clinic experience. In addition to the seminar, students are required to attend weekly supervisory meetings and to maintain case files for all cases and projects.

Questions: Contact Eve Brown, Practitioner in Residence ebrown1@suffolk.edu