Ranking of Patent Law Programs for 2011: Perhaps Six Junk-Science Ratings Are Better Than One

US News & World Report has released its updated rankings of intellectual property (IP) programs for 2011. The ranking is created by polling a subset of law professors who teach at least one intellectual property law course. The professors then list up to fifteen programs with good IP programs. Those "votes" are then used to create a ranking. Of course, most IP professors are not patent law professors.

Despite problems with the voting procedure, it is clear that every program on this list has an excellent IP program. And, although the list is not a "patent law program" list, all of the listed law schools employ at least one full-time faculty member whose primary teaching and research interest is patent law. Likewise, although you may quibble about individual rankings, there is no question that Berkeley's program deserves to be very highly ranked.

The US News list:

Rank	Law School
1.	University of California–Berkeley
2.	Stanford University
3.	George Washington University
4.	Boston University
5.	New York University
6.	Columbia University
7.	University of Michigan
8.	University of Houston
9.	Duke University
	Franklin Pierce Law Center (Soon to be University of New Hampshire School of Law)

Three schools were dropped from this year's USNews top-ten: Santa Clara University; Yeshiva University (Cardozo), and Chicago-Kent (IIT). These three schools all have strong patent law programs and have recently hired additional new patent-focused faculty members. Other schools with hefty patent-focused programs did not make the list. These include schools like George Mason, John Marshall, Suffolk, William Mitchell, etc. (See curriculum ranking below).

Boston University, Michigan, and Duke were all added to the USNews list this year, although each had previously been on the list at some point during the past decade.

Patently-O Rankings: I have redone my list of "the top thirty law school patent programs" based solely on the number of Patently-O visits received from the associated university in the past year. There are many problems with this "study." In fact, at first glance, I would tend to take this ranking as a complete joke except for the fact that it is probably at least as good as the US News IP Specialty ranking. Perhaps six junk-science ratings are better than one. Some of the problems with my ranking include: Many schools may not use their name in their IP address — making them lose their ranking. This appears to be true of Franklin Pierce Law Center (soon to be University of New Hampshire Law School). Larger schools naturally perform better because the scores are not corrected according to the number of students. Likewise, the measure that I used allows for a few intense users to change the result. Thus, I placed an asterisk beside the University of Missouri because my own visits to Patently-O likely altered the results. Schools where students (and professors) primarily study away from campus building may also rank relatively lower. Finally, many of the visits to Patently-O may come from other departments – such as the Technology Transfer and corporate counsel – rather than the law schools.

Rank	School	Relative Score (Based on Visits from School Domain to Patently-O)
1	George Washington University	100%
2	Columbia University, University of Missouri*	65%
4	Santa Clara University	60%
5	Stanford University	55%
6	University of Texas, University of California Berkeley	45%
8	Duke University, Harvard University, University of Wisconsin-Madison	40%
11	New York University, University of Virginia, Boston University, George Mason University, University of San Diego, Georgetown University, Cornell University	35%
18	Ohio State University, Indiana University (Bloomington), Washington University	30%
21	University of Pittsburgh, John Marshall Law School, University of Minnesota, University of Washington	25%
25	University of Illinois, Northwestern University, Suffolk University, Fordham University, University of Maryland. University of Connecticut, Rutgers University, University of Arkansas	20%

GWU tops this year's list as it did in my 2010 ranking. Overall, the schools in the top-ten have been relatively stable. Richmond fell off the list; Berkeley, Duke, and Wisconsin moved into the top-ten.

To add an additional layer of ranking, remember that almost 20,000 individuals access Patently-O through the free daily e-mail service. The following list ranks law school's according to the number of Patently-O e-mail subscribers. In addition to the biases mentioned above, we may have an additional bias if subscribers from some schools tend to use personal e-mail account (such as gmail) instead of the university account.

Rank	School	Relative Score (Based on the Number of Patently-O E-Mail Subscribers from School Domain)
1.	Franklin Pierce Law Center (University of New Hampshire Law School)	100%
2.	University of Michigan	60%
3.	Harvard University, Stanford University	45%
5.	George Washington University, Columbia University, University of California Berkeley, Chicago Kent Law School	40%
9.	Case Western Reserve University, University of Utah, Washington University, Elon University, Michigan State University	35%
14.	New York Law School, University of Washington, New York University, St. Louis University, University of Chicago, University of Denver, Yale University	25%

Franklin Pierce again tops this list (as it did in 2009). Harvard moved dramatically upward in the ranking.

Reputation Ranking of Patent Law Faculty: Part of the "reputation" of an IP program is based on the scholarship of its faculty. To create a ranking of faculty-member patent-law reputation, I searched for the number of law review citations associated with each IP-professor using the Westlaw JLR database. To ensure that the citations focused on patent-law reputation, the search looked for articles that somehow related to patent law. It takes some time for citations to begin to build-up, so it is not surprising that all of the professors on this list have been teaching for at least ten years.

Citation Rank	Faculty Name		School
1	Mark	Lemley	Stanford University
2	Robert	Merges	University of California, Berkeley
3	Rebecca	Eisenberg	University of Michigan
4	Dan	Burk	University of California, Irvine
5	Edmund	Kitch	University of Virginia
6	Rochelle	Dreyfuss	New York University
7	Paul	Goldstein	Stanford University
8	Pamela	Samuelson	University of California, Berkeley
9	Richard	Posner	University of Chicago
10	John	Duffy	George Washington University
11	Janice	Mueller	University of Pittsburgh
12	Arti	Rai	Duke University
13	Martin	Adelman	George Washington University
14	Julie	Cohen	Georgetown University
15	Maureen	O'Rourke	Boston University
16	A.S.	Oddi	University of Akron
17	Gerald	Mossinghoff	George Washington University
18	Polk	Wagner	University of Pennsylvania
19	Michael	Meurer	Boston University
20	Louis	Kaplow	Harvard University
21	Mark	Janis	Indiana University
22	Lawrence	Lessig	Harvard University
23	William	Landes	University of Chicago
24	James	Bessen	Boston University

If I had included Federal Circuit Judges in this listing, Judges Moore would jump into the top-ten. Likewise, if Donald Chisum was still teaching, he would be the clear #1. Four GWU faculty members are listed in the top-25 and BU have three ranked faculty members. Harvard, Stanford, Berkeley, and Chicago all had two.

IP Law Journal Ranking: Many law schools have created IP-focused law journals. Using data collected by the Washington & Lee Law Library, I created the following ranking of student-edited IP Law Journals. The ranking is based on how often articles published in each journal are cited in other journals or court cases. I only included journals with titles that include the terms "Intellectual property", "patent", or "technology." Thus, the Columbia Journal of Law & the Arts is not included in this list.

Rank	School	Journal	Relative Rank
1	Harvard University	Harvard Journal of Law & Technology	100
2	University of California, Berkeley	Berkeley Technology Law Journal	69
3	University of Michigan	Michigan Telecommunications and Technology Law Review	54.6
4	Fordham University	Fordham Intellectual Property, Media & Entertainment Law Journal	39.5
5	Stanford University	Stanford Technology Law Review	37.7
6	Santa Clara University	Santa Clara Computer and High Technology Law Journal	37.4
7	Duke University	Duke Law & Technology Review	36.3
8	Albany Law School	Albany Law Journal of Science & Technology	36.1
9	Boston University	Boston University Journal of Science & Technology Law	35
10	Columbia University	Columbia Science and Technology Law Review	33.7
11	Marquette University	Marquette Intellectual Property Law Review	31.3
12	Franklin Pierce Law Center	IDEA: The Intellectual Property Law Review	30.5
13	University of North Carolina	North Carolina Journal of Law & Technology	29.4
14	University of Minnesota	Minnesota Journal of Law, Science & Technology	29.2
15	University of Virginia	Virginia Journal of Law & Technology	28.9
16	University of Texas	Texas Intellectual Property Law Journal	28.6
17	University of Colorado	Journal on Telecommunications & High Technology Law	26.8
18	Yale University	Yale Journal of Law & Technology	25.7

IP Curriculum: Finally, William Mitchell College of Law has compiled a "Report on Intellectual Property Curricula" at the various law schools and used that to create a ranking based on course offerings.

Ranking	Law School	Total Points
1	Santa Clara University School of Law	19.5
2	Suffolk University Law School	19
3	Whittier Law School	18
4 (tie)	Franklin Pierce Law Center	17
	Georgetown University Law Center	17
	Seton Hall University School of Law	17
	The George Washington University Law School	17
	William Mitchell College of Law	17
9	The John Marshall Law School	16
10 (tie)	Chicago-Kent College of Law Illinois Institute of Technology	15
	The University of Akron School of Law	15
12	DePaul University College of Law	14.5
13	Vanderbilt University Law School	14
14	Benjamin N. Cardozo School of Law-Yeshiva University	13.5
15 (tie)	Loyola University Chicago School of Law	13
	Thomas Jefferson School of Law	13
17 (tie)	George Mason University School of Law	12
	Michigan State University College of Law	12
	New York Law School	12
	University of Houston Law Center	12
	University of Illinois College of Law	12
	University of Pittsburgh School of Law	12
	University of San Diego School of Law	12
24	University of Richmond School of Law	11.5
25 (tie)	Arizona State University-Sandra Day O'Connor College of Law	11
	Golden Gate University School of Law	11
	Pepperdine University School of Law	11
	Seattle University School of Law	11
	Stanford University Law School	11
	University of California-Berkeley School of Law	11
	University of California-Hastings College of the Law	11
	University of San Francisco School of Law	11
	Washington University School of Law	11