INTELLECTUAL PROPERTY LAW CLINIC

The Intellectual Property Law Clinic at Villanova Law provides pro-bono resources and legal support to the next generation of inventors and entrepreneurs.

The Intellectual Property (IP) Law Clinic at Villanova Law is uniquely taught from a governmental perspective and a commercial viewpoint, requiring students to establish and integrate intellectual property and entrepreneurial strategies. It is the only IP Clinic in the United States currently taught by a former United States Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) supervisory patent examiner. The transactional IP Clinic educates Villanova Law students about the intellectual property protection process and serves as a valuable community resource for legal representation.

With the costs of preparing and filing patent applications rising significantly each year, there are limited resources for individuals and small businesses seeking to advance economically by protecting their respective intellectual property. Revolutionary ideas and improvements are generated each year in engineering, nursing and business school classrooms; however, lack of access, education, guidance and financial resources prevents these conceptions from gaining societal or economic success. Villanova Law’s IP Clinic helps the next generation of inventors and entrepreneurs advance their technological, entrepreneurial and medical innovations.

Students working in the IP Clinic represent clients with a focus on the preliminary legal research in the patent and trademark prosecution process before filing applications with the USPTO. This includes prior art patentability and trademark clearance searches based on the client inventive concepts and proposed brand names, respectively, as well as freedom-to-operate analyses of client goods and services to establish risk assessments of potential infringement of the intellectual property rights of others.