Intellectual Property Law | Columbia Law School
About the Program
Columbia Law School is home to one of the nation’s most vibrant intellectual property law programs—a meeting place of dynamic faculty experts, stimulating events and coursework, alumni shaping the law in their fields, and engaged students eager to take advantage of all the resources. The program hosts numerous journals, student organizations, related initiatives, and affiliated centers.
Columbia Law School students pursuing studies in intellectual property law are offered a wide selection of courses, hands-on clinical training, internship opportunities, and seminars with leading domestic and international practitioners. The school also serves as the headquarters of the U.S. branch of Association Litteraire et Artistique Internationale (ALAI), an organization founded in Paris in 1878 (with Victor Hugo at the helm) to develop an international convention for the protection of literary and artistic property. During its early years, ALAI's work was critical to the development of the Convention for the Protection of Literary and Artistic Works, signed at Berne, Switzerland, in 1886, and known as the Berne Convention. ALAI has participated in all subsequent deliberations leading to Berne Convention revisions. In 2001, Columbia hosted the first ALAI international conference held in the United States, on the subject of “Adjuncts and Alternatives to Copyright.”
At the core of the Law School’s strength in IP education is the Kernochan Center for Law, Media and the Arts, whose programs have trained IP professionals for almost two decades. Named for Professor John M. Kernochan ’48, Nash Professor Emeritus of Law, the center offers in-depth instruction, lectures, internships, a clinic, fellowships, and publications. Students from around the world take courses and seminars on copyrights, trademarks, law and the visual arts, law and theater, law and sports, law and music, law and film, IP contracts, and the international and comparative protection of intellectual property.