World's first interdisciplinary IP graduate program: the Pierce Law advantage
The Graduate Program at Pierce Law, inaugurated in 1986 under the auspices of the newly established Germeshausen Center for the Law of Innovation and Entrepreneurship, has become an integral part of Pierce Law's educational mission over the past two decades and has proven to be a natural complement to its Juris Doctor degree program.
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| Professor Homer Blair, co-founder of the Graduate Programs was a chief corporate patent counsel for forty years. Professor Blair is the only person to have been President of both Licensing Executives Society USA/Canada and the International Trademark Association. |
From that very beginning, the complexion of Pierce Law's Graduate Program has been highly international, drawing students from around the globe. Recognizing the worldwide need for interdisciplinary intellectual property education for patent, trademark, and copyright professionals, government policy-makers, and business executives at the juncture of law, business, and technology, and building on Pierce Law's traditional strengths in intellectual property education, the one-year interdisciplinary Master of Intellectual Property [MIP] degree remains after two decades the only interdisciplinary degree program in intellectual property offered by any ABA-accredited law school. A decade later, the MIP degree was supplemented by the establishment of Pierce Law's Master of Laws in Intellectual Property [LLM-IP] degree program to address the need of lawyers from the United States and around the world for a recognized graduate academic law degree with the "Pierce Law" brand.
Graduate students enroll in the same courses as JD students. The addition of the LLM and MIP students to our community of scholars and professionals has opened up opportunities for major expansion in the number and quality of Pierce Law's intellectual property offerings and a strengthening of its overall intellectual property curriculum, leading to the wealth of curricular offerings in intellectual property studies we see today.
In 2000, responding to the rapid growth of information technologies and the multiple and complex legal issues that this development has engendered, Pierce Law expanded its interdisciplinary and LLM-IP programs to encompass the intersection of "commerce and technology." The MIPCT and LLM-IPCT programs have attracted over one thousand students from the United States and over 80 other countries and regions. Our alumni now constitute a global "Pierce Law Network" of graduates, many of whom have become significant players in the rapid globalization taking place in intellectual property and information technology law, policy, and business.
Most recently in 2006, building on the reputation of success of its graduates in policy-making positions around the world, and as a natural extension from its offerings in international studies, Pierce Law instituted its most recent graduate degree offerings - the Master of Laws in International Criminal Law and Justice [LLM-ICLJ] and interdisciplinary Master of International Criminal Law and Justice [MICLJ]. Graduate students are fully integrated into the Pierce Law community in every respect. The richness of international experience and diversity that they bring to Pierce Law has proven to be a powerful magnet for attracting a wide diversity of students to all of our degree programs.
