THE INSTITUTE FOR INTELLECTUAL PROPERTY & INFORMATION LAW is built around the talents of its faculty. Six full-time faculty with outstanding credentials and a remarkable body of published work constitute the core of the program. To complement their perspectives, the Institute affiliates regular faculty in related areas and secures leading experts from legal and corporate environments to serve as adjunct faculty. Synthesizing textbook studies with real-world case studies gives students a solid understanding of fundamental principles—and a first-person appreciation of how to apply them to maximum effect.
AMAN GEBRU
Assistant Professor of Law
S.J.D., University of Toronto Faculty of Law; LL.M., University of Washington School of Law; LL.B., Haramaya University College of Law
Professor Gebru’s research focuses on issues at the intersection of intellectual property law, innovation policy, and knowledge governance from both domestic and global perspectives. His recent projects examine how intellectual property laws deal with collectively developed innovation and creativity, such as hackathons, memes, dance crazes, and indigenous (traditional) knowledge.
Before joining the University of Houston Law Center, Professor Gebru served as an assistant professor of law at Duquesne University School of Law, a visiting assistant professor at Cardozo School of Law, Yeshiva University, and a Global Post-Doctoral Fellow at New York University School of Law. He has also taught internationally at the University of Ontario Institute of Technology (Canada) and Haramaya University College of Law (Ethiopia).
Subjects: Contracts, Property Law, Trademark Law, Copyright Law, Patent law, Intellectual Property Law, and International Intellectual Property Law
Selected Publications include: Communal Authorship, U. Rich. L. Rev. (forthcoming 2024); Biopiracy as an Abuse of the Patent System, in Intellectual Property Excesses (Enrico Bonadio and Aislinn O’Connell, eds.) (Hart Publishing, Oxford, 2022); Covid-19: Are we really in this together?, The Africa Report (2021); The Piracy Paradox and Indigenous Fashion, 39 Cardozo Arts & Ent. L. J. 607 ( 2021); Patents, Disclosure, & Biopiracy, 96 Denver Law Review 535 (2019).
For more information, visit Professor Gebru’s web page at https://www.law.uh.edu/faculty/main.asp?PID=7474.
NIKOLAS GUGGENBERGER
Assistant Professor of Law
J.D. – equivalent, Ph.D., Freiburg University; LL.M., Stanford Law School
Professor Guggenberger’s research and scholarship focuses on antitrust, law & technology, privacy, and regulation. In addition to his tenure-track appointment at the University of Houston Law Center, Professor Guggenberger holds a courtesy appointment at the Cullen College of Engineering’s Electrical and Computer Engineering Department.
Before joining the University of Houston Law Center, Professor Guggenberger was a Lecturer in Law at Yale Law School and Executive Director of the Yale Information Society Project. He held an appointment as the RWTÜV Foundation Assistant Professor at the University of Münster School of Law in Germany and taught at the University of Virginia School of Law and the University of São Paulo Law School. He also served as an advisor on banking and financial markets regulation and monetary and economic policy at the European Parliament in Brussels. He has frequently advised government entities and served as expert witness on technology policy, financial markets regulation, and media law.
Subjects: Antitrust, Privacy & Data Protection, Contracts, and Law & Technology
Selected Publications include: Moderating Monopolies, 38 Berkeley Tech. L.J. 119 (2023); Essential Platforms, 24 Stan. Tech. L. Rev. 237 (2021); The Essential Facilities Doctrine in the Digital Economy: Dispelling Persistent Myths, 23 Yale J.L. & Tech. 301 (2021); various recent publications in several Europe-based journals, published in German.
For more information, visit Professor Guggenberger’s web page at https://www.law.uh.edu/faculty/main.asp?PID=7475.
PAUL M. JANICKE
Professor of Law
B.E.E., Manhattan College; J.D. (LL.B.), New York University; LL.M., George Washington University
Professor Janicke is a recognized expert in intellectual property litigation and licensing. He clerked at the U.S. Court of Customs & Patent Appeals in Washington, D.C., from 1969 to 1971 before joining the intellectual property firm of Arnold, White & Durkee, where he later served as managing partner. Professor Janicke joined the UH Law Center faculty in 1992.
Subjects: Patent Law, Patent Remedies and Defenses, Licensing & Technology Transfer, Intellectual Property Survey, Intellectual Property Advanced Topics Seminar, Military Law, and Evidence
Selected Publications include: The Federal Circuit and the Seventh Amendment: Some Disentanglement Needed for Standards of Review, 28 Fed. Cir. B.J. 105 (2019); Modern Patent Litigation (4th ed. 2017); Patent Venue: Half Christmas Pie and Half Crow, 2017 Patently-O Patent Law Journal 13; The Imminent Outpouring from the Eastern District of Texas, 2017 Patently-O Patent Law Journal 1; An Interim Proposal for Fixing Ex Parte Patent Reexamination's Messy Side, 4 HLRe 43 (2013); The Judicial Panel on Multidistrict Litigation: Now a Strengthened Traffic Cop for Patent Venue, 32 Rev. Litig. 497 (2013); Overview of the New Patent Law of the United States, 21 Tex. Intell. Prop. L.J. 63 (2013); The Patent Malpractice Thicket, or Why Justice Holmes Was Right, 50 Hous. L. Rev. 437 (2012); A Need for Clearer Language About Patent Law, 11 J. Marshall Rev. Intell. Prop. L. 457 (2012); A Commentary on the New United States Patent Law, 60 Gewerblicher Rechtsschutz und Urheberrecht Internationaler Teil 887 (2011).
For more information, visit Professor Janicke’s web page at https://www.law.uh.edu/faculty/main.asp?PID=19.
ANDREW MICHAELS
Assistant Professor of Law
B.S., Washington University in St. Louis; J.D., New York University
Professor Michaels' academic focus is in the area of intellectual property, with a particular focus on patent law, and emerging technologies including blockchain and artificial intelligence. His work has appeared in legal journals such as the George Mason Law Review, the Stanford Journal of Blockchain Law & Policy, and the Brooklyn Law Review. He also regularly publishes more practice-oriented pieces in trade journals such as Law360, IPWatchdog, and Patently-O. Prior to joining the UH Law Center faculty, he clerked for the Honorable Pauline Newman on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit, practiced as a patent litigator, and taught as the Frank H. Marks Intellectual Property Fellow at George Washington University Law School.
Subjects: Patent Law, Intellectual Property Survey, and Statutory Interpretation & Regulation
Selected Publications include: Confusion in Trademarked NFTs, 6 Stan. J. Blockchain L. & Pol’y _ (forthcoming); Benefits of the Invention and Social Value in Patent Law, 29 George Mas. L. Rev. 827 (2022); Retroactivity and Appointments, 52 Loy. U. Chi. L. J. 627 (2021); Artificial Intelligence, Legal Change, and Separation of Powers, 88 U. Cin. L. Rev. 1083 (2020); Implicit Overruling and Foreign Lost Profits, 25 B.U. J. Sci. & Tech. L. 101 (2019); The Patent Lawyer’s Guide to Fascism: On Individual Autonomy and Private Law, 49 N.M. L. Rev. 169 (2019); Abstract Innovation, Virtual Ideas, and Artificial Legal Thought, 14 J. Bus. & Tech. L. 101 (2018); Patent Transfer and the Bundle of Rights, 83 Brooklyn L. Rev. 933 (2018); The Holding-Dictum Spectrum, 70 Arkansas L. Rev. 661 (2017); Pot Calls Kettle Dictum: Expanded Secret Prior Art in Obviousness, 26 Fed. Cir. Bar J. 93 (2016); Tones That Echo From a Past Era of Rigid Jurisprudence: Pre-Challenge Royalties and the Federal Circuit's Shell Test, 31 Santa Clara High Tech. L. J. 543 (2015).
For more information, visit Professor Michaels' web page
at https://www.law.uh.edu/faculty/main.asp?PID=5289.
GREG R. VETTER
HIPLA Professor of Law; Associate Dean for Academic Affairs
B.S.E.E., Missouri University of Science and Technology; M.S., University of Missouri-Kansas City; M.B.A., Rockhurst University; J.D., Northwestern University
Professor Vetter is a leading expert on intellectual property as applied to software and the business of software, with particular emphasis on free and open source software. Prior to law school, he gained extensive business expertise in software design, management, and marketing through nine years of work experience in the software industry. After several years in law practice, he clerked for the Honorable Arthur J. Gajarsa on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit in Washington, D.C., before joining the Law Center in 2002. Besides his duties at the Institute for Intellectual Property & Information Law since 2002, he has been an invited visitor teaching intellectual property law at three other law schools in that time frame: University of Texas at Austin School of Law (2006-07); University of Washington School of Law (Fall 2010); Texas A&M University School of Law (Spring 2015). Since the summer of 2017 he has served as the Law Center’s Associate Dean for Academic Affairs.
Subjects: Digital Transactions, Intellectual Property Survey, Intellectual Property Advanced Topics Seminar, Internet Law, International Intellectual Property, Intellectual Property Strategy & Management, Licensing, Patent Law, Property, and Trademark Law
Selected Publications include: Modern Music Dissemination and Licensing Innovation, 99 B.U. L. Rev. 2551 (2019); Opportunistic Free and Open Source Software Development Pathways, 30 Harv. J.L. & Tech. 167 (2017); Are Prior User Rights Good for Software?, 73 Tex. Intell. Prop. L.J. 251 (2015); Patent Law chapters for Intellectual Property Law (LexisNexis 2015) (intellectual property survey course casebook, with John Cross, Doris Long & Peter Yu); Patent Law’s Unpredictability Doctrine and the Software Arts, 76 Mo. L. Rev. 763 (2011); Patenting Cryptographic Technology, 84 Chicago-Kent L. Rev. 757 (2010); Commercial Free and Open Source Software: Knowledge Production, Hybrid Appropriability, and Patents, 77 Fordham L. Rev. 2087 (2009).
For more information, visit Professor Vetter’s web page at https://www.law.uh.edu/faculty/main.asp?PID=545.
LEONARD M. BAYNES
Dean and Professor of Law
B.S., New York University; M.B.A., J.D., Columbia University
Dean Baynes joined the Law Center in the summer of 2014, bringing a national reputation as a communications law scholar, with specializations in business, media, and diversity issues.
EMILY BERMAN
Associate Professor of Law and Royce R. Till Professorship
B.A., Duke University; J.D., LL.M., New York University
Professor Berman’s scholarship examines the unique separation-of-powers challenges that arise in the constitutional, statutory, and regulatory regimes governing national-security policy. She clerked for the Honorable John M. Walker, Jr. of the Second Circuit Court of Appeals. She teaches National Security Law, Foreign Affairs Law, and Constitutional Law.
DARREN BUSH
Leonard B. Rosenberg College Professor of Law
B.A., California State University, San Bernardino; Ph.D., J.D., University of Utah
Professor Bush previously served in the U.S. Department of Justice’s Antitrust Division, with attention to state deregulation of electric utilities as well as mergers and anticompetitive conduct in wholesale and retail energy markets. He teaches Antitrust, Regulated Industries, Law & Economics, and Administrative Law.
SETH CHANDLER
Law Foundation Professor of Law
A.B., Princeton University; J.D., Harvard University
Professor Chandler is a leader in the emerging scholarly discipline of law and computation, where his scholarship uses computational modeling to better understand such areas of interest as insurance law, health law, economic analysis of law, and contracts. His courses include Analytic Methods for Lawyers, which includes various methods applied to the effect and operation of law.
RICHARD F. DOLE
Bobby Wayne Young Professor of Consumer Law
B.A., Bates College; LL.B., LL.M., Cornell University; S.J.D., University of Michigan
Professor Dole assisted in drafting both the Uniform Trade Secrets Act and the Uniform Deceptive Trade Practices Act. His recent scholarship concerns remedies under the UTSA. Professor Dole’s teaching interests include Bankruptcy, Commercial Law, Creditors’ Rights, and Unfair Competition.
LEAH R. FOWLER
Research Assistant Professor of Law and Research Director of the Health Law & Policy Institute
B.S., Georgetown University; J.D., University of Houston; M.P.H., University of Texas Health Science Center at Houston
Professor Fowler’s work explores topics at the intersection of consumer technology and health, with emphasis on smartphone applications and platforms. Prior to UH, Professor Fowler was the Health Policy Program Manager at Baylor College of Medicine’s Center for Medical Ethics & Health Policy, where she maintains a designation as a Health Policy Scholar.
LAWRENCE F. PINSKY
Moores Professor, Physics Department, College of Natural Sciences and Mathematics, University of Houston
B.S., Carnegie Mellon University; M.A., Ph.D., University of Rochester; J.D., LL.M., University of Houston
Dr. Pinsky's specialties include experimental particle physics, heavy ion physics, nucleon structure functions, space radiation simulation, medium energy physics, and charged particle detector development. He is involved in projects at CERN, BNL, NASA, and Fermilab. He teaches Internet Law and Intellectual Property Survey.
PETER N. SALIB
Assistant Professor of Law
B.A., J.D., The University of Chicago
Professor Salib’s research focuses on problems at the intersection of public law, economics, and artificial intelligence. His scholarship has been published or is forthcoming in, among others, The University of Chicago Law Review, the Northwestern University Law Review, and the Texas Law Review. He clerked for the Honorable Frank H. Easterbrook and practiced law at Sidley Austin, LLP, where he specialized in appellate litigation.
AMANDA WATSON
Director, Law Library and Assistant Professor of Law
B.A., Mississippi University for Women; J.D., University of Mississippi School of Law; M.I.S., Florida State University
Professor Watson joined the Law Center faculty as director of the Law Library and assistant professor of law after a seven-year stint at the Tulane University School of Law Library where she served as associate director and adjunct associate professor. Her career also includes several years as Manager of Information Services at Phelps Dunbar, LLP, serving as a State Librarian of Mississippi, and as a clerk at the Mississippi Court of Appeals.
CRAIG JOYCE
Professor of Law, Emeritus
B.A., Dartmouth College; M.A., Oxford University; J.D., Stanford University
Professor Joyce is the founding author of the widely used casebook, Copyright Law (12th ed. Forthcoming 2024). His articles on copyright history and doctrine have appeared in numerous journals, including the Emory, Harvard, Houston, Michigan, UCLA, and Vanderbilt law reviews, and are cited regularly by the federal appellate courts. Joyce edited The Majesty of the Law (2003) for Supreme Court Justice Sandra Day O'Connor. He taught at the Institute on Chinese Law & Business in Beijing in Summer 2011 and 2012.
Craig Joyce taught copyright, American legal history, and torts. During his career at the University of Houston Law Center, he received various awards: Outstanding Teacher, Hispanic Law Students Association; A.A. White Professor of the Year, Student Bar Association; Student Advocate Appreciation Award (first recipient), also from SBA; Honorary Alumnus, Houston Law Review; Faculty Distinction Award, Law Alumni Association; Ethel M. Baker Award for Outstanding Service (first recipient and first repeat recipient), UHLC; and “The Craig Joyce Medal” for Extraordinary and Sustained Volunteer Service to the Society (first awardee of that namesake honor), American Society for Legal History. Joyce graduated from Dartmouth College, Oxford University, and Stanford Law School. He practiced in his hometown, Phoenix, AZ, before entering legal academia. At the Law Center, Joyce was founding faculty director of the Institute for Intellectual Property & Information Law. He is a member of the American Law Institute, the American Society for Legal History, and the International Association for the Advancement of Teaching and Research in Intellectual Property. He served on the editorial boards of the Journal of Supreme Court History, ASLH's Humanities Social Sciences Online Discussion Network, and the Journal of the Copyright Society of the U.S.A. His scholarship has appeared in numerous law reviews, including (alphabetically) Emory, Georgia, Harvard, Houston, Michigan, UCLA, and Vanderbilt, been published in the American National Biography, the Oxford Companion to the Supreme Court of the United States, the Oxford International Encyclopedia of Legal History, and the Yale Biographical Dictionary of American Law. Joyce is the lead author of the widely adopted Copyright Law casebook (now in its Eleventh Edition), and edited "The Majesty of the Law" by Justice Sandra Day O'Connor. Justice O'Connor's latest book, "Out of Order," is dedicated to her 100 clerks and to Joyce by name.
YOCEL ALONSO, Alonso PLLC. B.A., University of Houston, University of Salamanca, Spain; J.D., University of Houston Law Center
JEFFREY ANDREWS, Yetter Coleman LLP. B.S. (Biological Sciences) and B.A. (Political Science), University of Rochester; M.F.S., Yale University; Ph.D., Duke University; J.D., University of Houston
BRYCE BARCELO, Susman Godfrey L.L.P. B.S., Worcester Polytechnic Institute ; J.D., University of Houston
JUSTEN BARKS, Beard & Barks PLLC. B.B.A., Belmont University; J.D., University of Houston Law Center
JAMES BEEBE, Baker Hughes. B.S. (Chemical Engineering), Mississippi State University; M.C.E., J.D., University of Houston Law Center
LOUIS BRUCCULERI, Intrado. B.S. (Electrical Engineering), Tulane University; J.D., The University of Texas at Austin
BRIAN COOPER, American Flag Football League. A.B., Cornell University ; M.P.P., Harvard University ; J.D., Columbia Law School
CARLO COTRONE, Techtronic Industries North America, Inc. B.S. (Electrical Engineering), J.D., Marquette University
ALI DHANANI, Baker Botts L.L.P. B.S. (Computer Science), J.D., University of Houston
LEE HUNT, Kelly Hart & Hallman LLP. B.S., Texas State University; M.P.A., (Bush School of Government and Public Service) Texas A&M University; J.D., University of Houston Law Center
AARON LEVINE, Polsinelli PC. B.S. (Mechanical Engineering), Cornell University; J.D., New York University
STEVE MAULE, Baker Botts L.L.P. B.S. (Electrical & Computer Engineering), M.S. (Electrical & Computer Engineering), Baylor University; M.B.A., J.D., University of Houston
TOM MAVRAKAKIS, IBM. B.S. (Electrical Engineering), Polytechnic University; J.D., St. John's University
ANNA E. RAIMER, Jones Day. B.A., Tulane University; J.D., The University of Texas at Austin
ERICK ROBINSON, Spencer Fane LLP. B.A., Pomona College; J.D., The University of Texas at Austin; M.B.A., Indiana University
MATT TODD, Polsinelli PC. B.B.A., The University of Texas at Austin; M.B.A., University of Oxford; J.D., St. Mary's University
D.C. TOEDT III, Law Office of D.C. Toedt III. B.A., J.D., The University of Texas at Austin
MARCELLA WATKINS, Ewing & Jones, PLLC. B.S. (Chemical Engineering), Rice University; J.D., The University of Texas at Austin
MATTHEW ZORN, Yetter Coleman LLP. B.A., Emory University; J.D., Columbia University
JASON BEESINGER, Service Corporation International. B.A., Texas A&M University; J.D., University of Houston Law Center
SEAN BELDING, Perkins Coie LLP. B.S. (Nuclear Engineering), Oregon State University; J.D., University of Houston Law Center
ALLAN BULLWINKEL, Heim, Payne & Chorush, LLP. B.S. (Computer Engineering), Mississippi State University; J.D., University of Houston Law Center
JOSH DAVIS, Josh Davis Law Group. B.S., Trinity University; J.D., University of Houston Law Center
GARY Y. GOULD, Norton Rose Fulbright US LLP. B.A., University of California Berkeley; J.D., The University of Texas School of Law
WILL SPROTT, PricewaterhouseCoopers LLP. B.S. (Biomedical Engineering), Tulane University; J.D., University of Houston Law Center
SABRINA TOMLINSON, B.A., University of Miami; J.D., Georgetown University Law Center
