On October 5-6, 2012, professors and students of Drake Law School participated in the 2012 annual meeting of the Iowa Intellectual Property Law Association (IIPLA) in the Quad Cities Waterfront Convention Center in Bettendorf. Founded in 1989, IIPLA was established to promote the development of intellectual property law in Iowa and to enhance the professionalism of its members.
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Peter Yu, Kern Family Chair in Intellectual Property Law at Drake Law School, delivered a presentation titled, “Is There Anything New about Patent Protection in China?” He discussed the emergence of China as a patent powerhouse and offered practice-oriented tips on protecting intellectual property in China. Yu is the founder and director of the Drake Intellectual Property Law Center. He recently served as a rapporteur for the World Intellectual Property Organization on a project on intellectual property training and education.
At the luncheon meeting, Shontavia Johnson, assistant professor of law at Drake Law School, was elected to the IIPLA board of directors. She will join a number of distinguished Drake alums on the board, which currently features Jason Hunt, LW’01, Will Tinker, LW’07, and Jon Sievers, LW’09. Johnson has an academic background in biosystems engineering and practiced in the intellectual property area before joining Drake University.
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In addition, IIPLA also awarded the Drake intellectual property moot court team $2,000 of financial support for its participation in the upcoming Saul Lefkowitz Moot Court Competition. Participating in this year’s competition are Joshua Conley, Kyle Mendenhall, Funmi Okinmulero and Lindsey Purdy. Tim Alberts will serve as an alternate.
“The IIPLA meeting was a great opportunity to meet Iowa’s practicing intellectual property attorneys and learn more about current issues in intellectual property law. I would highly recommend attending the annual meeting to any law student interested in practicing intellectual property,” said Mendenhall, who made a brief presentation at the IIPLA annual meeting on behalf of the intellectual property moot court team.
Erin Cassidy concurred, “The IIPLA Conference was an excellent opportunity for students interested in intellectual property law to meet practicing attorneys from Iowa. It also provided insight into current intellectual property issues and how they affect practitioners.”
Along with Mendenhall and Cassidy, three other Drake intellectual property law students, Corey Bird, Krystal Campbell and Srikant Mikkilineni, participated in the IIPLA annual meeting. All five participating students are members of either the Drake Law Review or the Drake Journal of Agricultural Law. The students’ participation was organized through the Intellectual Property Law Society (IPLS) and funded by the Drake Intellectual Property Law Center. Founded in 1993, IPLS remains one of the Law School’s most longstanding student organizations.
The Drake Intellectual Property Law Center offers an innovative curriculum, providing students with a solid foundation in both the theoretical and practical aspects of intellectual property law. In the past four years, U.S. News and World Report magazine has ranked the center consistently among the top intellectual property law programs in the United States and one of the top five programs in the Midwest.