The UH Law Center’s Institute for Intellectual Property and Information Law will host its twenty-first annual fall lecture Wednesday Nov. 5 downtown at the Four Seasons Hotel, 1300 Lamar Street. A reception will start the event at 5:30 p.m., and the lecture will be given by patent attorney Dennis Crouch at 6:15 p.m.
Crouch is an Associate Professor of Law at the University of Missouri. He is also the founder and editor of the popular patent-law weblog Patently-O. IPIL co-director Greg Vetter said Crouch’s lecture will offer important networking opportunities for students.
“Any chance you have as a law student to get out and see how professionals interact either in the work setting or at these events is something to be taken advantage of,” Vetter said. “For the students, many of them have taken patent law, so they can follow the lecture and learn more about patent law that they hadn’t before.”
Vetter said as an expert in patent law, Crouch was the perfect candidate to deliver the fall lecture.
“He is an expert in this field,” Vetter said. “It’s a very active area of law, and it’s a very important area of law.”
Patent law covers the rights to inventions and ensures that competitors are not allowed to use a certain idea for personal gain. According to the Cornell Institute Law School’s Legal Information Institute, a patent is “essentially a limited monopoly whereby the patent holder is granted the exclusive right to make, use and sell the patented innovation for a limited period of time.”
“What’s unique about patent law is the scope of your patent right, how much exclusionary power one can get for an innovation,” Vetter said.
Vetter said Crouch’s well-known patent law blog is a good starting place for STEM undergraduates exploring the possibility of law school. Primarily, the blog is geared towards patent lawyers, but Vetter says Crouch’s work can prove to be a valuable asset to students.
“The “o” in Patently-O stands for obvious,” Vetter said. “We don’t want the invention to be obvious — that’s the legal test, securing a patent that does that.”
Vetter said he is hopeful students will mingle with intellectual property lawyers and explore the areas of patent law that could play an important role in their futures. Crouch’s lecture is free and open to the public.
