Maryland Carey Law’s Intellectual Property Program is pleased to announce that alumnus Oliver Edwards ‘06 will be joining the Intellectual Property and Entrepreneurship Clinic as a Clinical Law Instructor specializing in patent law.
Edwards joins Law School Professor and Director of the Intellectual Property Law Program, Patricia Campbell, and Clinical Law Instructor, Katherine Taylor, to offer students opportunities to help local businesses and entrepreneurs while gaining invaluable legal training in the areas of patents, trademarks, copyright, and other business matters.
Like many attorneys in patent law, Edwards is a second-career legal professional, having worked as an engineer at the U.S. Department of Defense after obtaining dual degrees in electrical engineering and computer engineering from the University of Missouri-Columbia. Starting in the school’s evening program and transitioning to the day program for his final year, Edwards earned his J.D. in 2006. After graduation, he worked at a well-regarded mid-sized IP boutique law firm and later spun up his own practice which he has continued up to his appointment as clinical law instructor.
“I’ve been looking for opportunities to use my knowledge and experience to serve the legal community and beyond,” Edwards explains. “Serving as a clinical law instructor in the Intellectual Property and Entrepreneurship Clinic is a perfect fit. I look forward to helping student attorneys provide top-notch work product for clinic clients and get solid experience working directly with those clients and the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office.”
Edwards says he was drawn to patent law because of his engineering background but has especially enjoyed helping innovators protect their rights in their inventions with the challenge of the dynamic nature of patent law and hopes to instill in students professional and personal pride in having had an attorney role in helping their client innovators with the patenting process and obtaining protection for their inventions.
Edwards has high expectations for what IPEC students should learn from a clinical law course. “All IPEC student attorneys can expect to learn substantive patent law and some procedure as well. Those having a patent focus will have the additional benefit of experiential learning of prior art searching, application drafting, client counseling, and communication, using U.S. Patent and Trademark Office filing systems and resources, and working with patent examiners.” He continues, “And even though that experiential learning is at the front end of the patenting process, patent-focused student attorneys can expect to learn about the long arc of a patent’s lifetime with its many avenues for related properties, correction, challenges, and enforcement which affect front end prosecution and drafting decisions.”