Thomas Ward
Professor of Law
B.A., University of Pennsylvania
LL.B., University of Notre Dame
LL.M., University of Illinois
Office Phone: (207) 780-4369
tward@usm.maine.edu
Professor Ward came to Maine in 1976 after private practice in Burlington, Vermont and four years of law teaching at the University of South Carolina. While he remains firmly attached to Maine and its small, highly motivated student body, Professor Ward is very active in the legal academy outside the state. He has been a Visiting Professor at Illinois, Notre Dame, Seattle University and the National University of Ireland at Galway. In addition to summer school assignments at Illinois, Boston College, Northeastern, Seattle, South Carolina and Lewis & Clark, he is a frequent lecturer in the Intellectual Property Summer Institute at the Franklin Pierce Law Center.
Professor Ward was co-chair of the ABA Subcommittee on Intellectual Property Financing from 2001 until 2008 and currently serves as a research fellow for the Licensing Executives Society (USA and Canada). Professor Ward's published works and presentations cover a range of topics in the areas of commercial law, bankruptcy and intellectual property. During the 2010 Fall Term, Professor Ward was a Visiting Professor at the Seattle University School of Law.
Recent Publications and Presentations
Professor Ward's treatise, Intellectual Property in Commerce, is in its ninth revised edition (West Group rev. ed. 2009). The treatise is also accessible as a database on Westlaw [IPCOMM].
In June 2008, Professor Ward presented a paper on Perfection and Proceeds of Intellectual Property Collateral in Bankruptcy at the annual ALI/ABA program on “Emerging UCC Developments” at Fordham Law School in New York.
In November 2006, Professor Ward presented a paper on Intellectual Property Collateral as part of a Program sponsored by the Notre Dame Law School and the Indiana Bar Association at Notre Dame.
Professor Ward's paper entitled Financing Ripples in the Patent Pool was presented at Seattle University's Conference on Intellectual Property and Competition Policy held in Seattle on April 6-7, 2006.
In April 2005, he served as faculty moderator for the three-day Annual Seminar of the Financial Lawyers Conference in Indian Wells, California. The 2005 Annual Seminar topic was "Intellectual Property Assets in Commercial Law and Bankruptcy."
In March 2005, he was co-moderator for a program on "Financing in the Music Industry" presented by the ABA Subcommittee on Intellectual Property Financing at the Annual Meeting of the ABA Business Law Section in Nashville, Tennessee.
Photo by Dominique Mattozzi
