Intellectual Property Clinic

The Intellectual Property Clinic provides legal services to community on a pro bono basis in the area of intellectual property law, and the clinic offers law students a supervised experience in the practice of intellectual property law as part of their legal education.  By assisting the clinic in representing its clients, students in the clinic have the opportunity to continue developing their understanding of intellectual property law and applying that understanding in real-world situations.  In addition to helping students increase their familiarity with each of the various regimes of intellectual property law, the clinic also helps students increase their familiarity with how the various regimes of intellectual property law relate to one another.  Students enrolled in the clinic have the opportunity to assist the clinic’s clients in a variety of intellectual property law matters.  For example, some matters might include copyright matters, patent matters, right of publicity matters, trademark matters, and trade secret matters.

How to Inquire About Receiving the Clinic’s Services

To inquire about potentially receiving legal services from the Intellectual Property Clinic, please send an e-mail to the clinic’s director, Salvatore Gianino, at sgianino@wustl.edu.  Please describe in your e-mail the nature of the services you’re seeking (e.g., copyright, patent, trademark, trade secret, and/or right of publicity services).  Please note that sending an e-mail to the clinic’s director to inquire about potentially receiving legal services from the clinic does not automatically make you (or any other person or organization) a client of the clinic.  The clinic will only accept as clients those that cannot otherwise afford legal representation using available sources of funding (e.g., personal incomes, organizational revenue, investor contributions, etc.).  The clinic also considers many other factors when deciding whether to accept an individual or an organization as a client, and there is no guarantee that your e-mail inquiry will result in you, your organization, or anyone else becoming a client of the clinic.  All inquiries are treated as confidential.