The Patent Clinic
The Patent Clinic is a joint effort between the TEC and the University of Illinois College of Law (COL) in which selected participants from the Cozad New Venture Competition and the Lemelson-Illinois Student Prize entrants can have a patent application drafted for them at no cost, if their invention description includes a novel and potentially patentable device, system, or method. The value of this program is worth at least $10,000-$12,000 per patent application for each student/team. Innovators work with third-year law students to give them the information needed to author the applications, under the supervision of Professor Joe Barich.

Joe Barich is a shareholder at the law firm McAndrews, Held & Malloy Ltd. in Chicago and is also an Adjunct Professor in the College of Law where he has taught Patent Prosecution since the Spring semester of 2005. He partnered with TEC to launch the Patent Clinic during the spring of 2008; and this year accepted seven student teams from more than twenty that applied. The collaboration and partnership is one that TEC continues to nurture and develop with each academic year. To date, thirteen patent applications have been drafted for our student innovators, which has provided over $120,000 in free patent work to them.  

For more information about past Patent Clinic inventions, click here.