Passing the Torch | A Legacy of Access and Opportunity
Stopped by UIC Law to catch up with Gary Friedlander and tie up a few loose ends. Even though Gary has just been on the job for two weeks, he has hit the ground running. Besides getting up to speed on institutional processes and priorities, he secured financial support from one of the largest law firms in the world and, with it, a new and impressive partner for the IP program.
UIC Law’s IP program dates to 1940, over eighty years ago. Since its earliest days, the program has earned a national reputation for the quality of its courses and graduates. Two of the best known are Howard Markey and Don Banner. They would leave their marks as the inaugural chief judge of the highest patent appeals court in the United States and Commissioner for Patents and Trademarks. Both would return to serve the IP community through the law school. Chief Judge Markey as its dean and Commissioner Banner as director of its IP program, a position he would hold for over twenty years.
One leader receives the torch from another and builds on the long and unbroken legacy of commitment to the program’s success and its relevance to practice, policymaking, and thought leadership. Over the years, its leaders built strong institutional and personal ties with Asia and Europe, expanded the center’s focus to include privacy and technology law, and created new degree programs to offer non-lawyers an opportunity to earn a graduate legal education. Stakeholders at the highest levels of government, industry, practice, and nonprofit work mingle with law students and local bar members at the IP program’s annual conference. The mission of access and opportunity continues to this day.
Attendees at the IP Center’s programs know they can depend on those programs to bring together those who can help them make sense of technically complex issues like AI as well as very human ones, like how improving diversity, equity, and inclusion through the IP system can improve a nation’s GDP and lift the lives and livelihoods of millions, among the many other topics of contemporary significance. The times we live in, and those leading the IP program may change, but its commitment to excellence and relevance has endured. Long may it be so.
Photos (Clockwise): A card I left for Gary, inspired by a White House tradition (https://cnn.it/3RBig1T), with Gary, the view from Gary’s office, where I often reminded myself to keep successes and failures, obstacles and accolades – everything in perspective.
Stopped by UIC Law to catch up with Gary Friedlander and tie up a few loose ends. Even though Gary has just been on the job for two weeks, he has hit the ground running. Besides getting up to speed on institutional processes and priorities, he secured financial support from one of the largest law firms in the world and, with it, a new and impressive partner for the IP program.
UIC Law’s IP program dates to 1940, over eighty years ago. Since its earliest days, the program has earned a national reputation for the quality of its courses and graduates. Two of the best known are Howard Markey and Don Banner. They would leave their marks as the inaugural chief judge of the highest patent appeals court in the United States and Commissioner for Patents and Trademarks. Both would return to serve the IP community through the law school. Chief Judge Markey as its dean and Commissioner Banner as director of its IP program, a position he would hold for over twenty years.
One leader receives the torch from another and builds on the long and unbroken legacy of commitment to the program’s success and its relevance to practice, policymaking, and thought leadership. Over the years, its leaders built strong institutional and personal ties with Asia and Europe, expanded the center’s focus to include privacy and technology law, and created new degree programs to offer non-lawyers an opportunity to earn a graduate legal education. Stakeholders at the highest levels of government, industry, practice, and nonprofit work mingle with law students and local bar members at the IP program’s annual conference. The mission of access and opportunity continues to this day.
Attendees at the IP Center’s programs know they can depend on those programs to bring together those who can help them make sense of technically complex issues like AI as well as very human ones, like how improving diversity, equity, and inclusion through the IP system can improve a nation’s GDP and lift the lives and livelihoods of millions, among the many other topics of contemporary significance. The times we live in, and those leading the IP program may change, but its commitment to excellence and relevance has endured. Long may it be so.
Photos (Clockwise): A card I left for Gary, inspired by a White House tradition (https://cnn.it/3RBig1T), with Gary, the view from Gary’s office, where I often reminded myself to keep successes and failures, obstacles and accolades – everything in perspective.