Responding to the enormous demand for lawyers with a sound knowledge of intellectual property issues, dozens of law schools worldwide now offer specialized IP law programs and courses as a part of their LL.M. programs.

John N. Riccardi directs one of these programs – the Intellectual Property Law LL.M. program at the Boston University School of Law. Riccardi says his students get a “solid grounding in the theory behind the key doctrines of intellectual property law – in copyright, patents and trademark/unfair competition law – while also gaining exposure to some of the cutting-edge issues that individuals and enterprises face as a result of the rapid technological advances taking place throughout the world, whether in digital and information technology or the biological sciences.”

According to the US News & World Report 2006 law school survey, the top-ranked IP programs in the United States are Stanford, UC Berkeley (Boalt Hall), and George Washington University (GW Law).

Robert Brauneis, who co-directs the IP LL.M. program at GW Law, suggests one of the keys to a successful program is catering to the needs of both US- and foreign-trained lawyers, who often have different reasons for pursuing an LL.M. US-trained lawyers, for example, often come to GW to make the switch to IP law from another field of law, or to get a degree from a higher-ranking school than where they received their J.D. Foreign-trained lawyers, however, may already have lots of experience practising IP law in their home country, but want to learn more about US law or prepare for a US bar exam.

“Because we offer a large number of both US and international and comparative courses, students can choose to focus more on domestic or more on international issues”, says Brauneis. “These days, the two are also often intertwined – to understand a provision in US law, you need to understand that it was required by an international treaty, and learn something about the background of that treaty.”

“Many of our graduates who stay in the U.S. go to law firms,” says Brauneis. “You will find GW LL.M.s in most major firms with substantial IP practices, such as Finnegan Henderson, Wilson Sonsini, Foley and Lardner, Fish & Richardson, Howrey, Banner & Witcoff, Kenyon & Kenyon, and many, many others.”

“We also have graduates in government, not only at the Patent and Trademark Office but also as judicial clerks and legislative aides,” adds Brauneis. “Many are also in-house counsel in corporations, although they often start out at firms. There is a similar mix among foreign students who go back to their home countries, though the mix differs somewhat from country to country.”

The list of high-quality IP programs in the United States is perhaps too long to reproduce here, but along with the aforementioned schools, a short list would certainly also include Cardozo-Yeshiva, Duke, Santa Clara, Columbia, Houston, Franklin Pierce, John Marshall, Case Western Reserve University, Chicago-Kent, DePaul, University of Washington (Seattle), Michigan State, and Fordham.

There are also excellent IP programs to be found in the United Kingdom, including those at Glasgow, Aberdeen, Edinburgh and the University of London schools (Queen Mary, King’s, UCL). Perhaps the leading specialized program on the European continent is the Munich Intellectual Property Law Center (MIPLC) in Germany, which is a cooperative project of the Max Planck Institute, the universities of Munich and Augsburg, and GW Law.

Some LL.M. programs – including those at Berkeley, Stanford, Glasgow, Edinburgh, and Ottawa – give students the opportunity to focus squarely on information technology or “law and technology".

Whichever of these programs you might choose, professors in the field agree that the demand for IP lawyers and IP LL.M. graduates shows no signs of abating in the coming years.

“I believe that the future career prospects for LL.M. graduates in IP will remain strong,” says Jeffrey M. Samuels of the University of Akron, the home of another specialized IP LL.M. program in the United States.

“The level of activity in the areas of patent, trademark, and copyright law, and the importance of IP to the national and global economy, will require an increasing number of attorneys well versed in this area of the law,” adds Samuels. “I would anticipate that the demand for IP attorneys will increase over the years, given the expanding scope of patentable subject matter, the advent of new technologies, and increased globalization.”

John Riccardi from Boston University agrees: “I have every reason to believe that the demand for US intellectual property law studies among foreign-trained lawyers will stay strong – and even increase – particularly among the rapidly growing Asian economies of China and India,” says Riccardi.

“As US businesses expand into these markets, they will need competent local counsel that understands local laws, as well as the US perspective. This is not just in Asia – it's around the world – but the surge in interest among Asian economies within the past five years has been dramatic.”

The US House of Representatives unanimously passed a bill Tuesday to deny retirement pensions to any member of Congress "convicted of any of certain offenses," including fraud, bribery and perjury. Currently, federal lawmakers can only be stripped of their benefits for treason or espionage. The new legislation, passed by a vote of 431-0, adds to the list the crimes of bribery, acting as a foreign agent, breaking restrictions on becoming a lobbyist, committing perjury, convincing another person to commit perjury, and conspiracy to commit one of these crimes. Some legislators even sought to go further, including Rep. Mark Kirk (R-IL) who failed to secure passage of an amendment that would have also put crimes such as tax evasion, wire fraud, and racketeering on the list. The House bill still needs to be reconciled with the Senate's version before a final vote can be held. Neither the House nor Senate version of the bill is retroactive.

Tuesday's unanimous vote signals House lawmakers' desire to improve their image after a year in which several bribery and influence-peddling scandals made headlines. Most notably, former US Rep. Tom DeLay (R-TX) was forced to resign [JURIST report] and former US Rep. Bob Ney (R-OH) was sentenced to prison for their connections to lobbyist Jack Abramoff. Meanwhile, former Rep. Randy "Duke" Cunningham (R-CA) received a record sentence in March 2006 for taking bribes from a defense contractor, and Rep. William Jefferson (D-LA) came under investigation in a separate bribery investigation.

"The attorney-general, with the agreement of the state attorney, reached the conclusion that there is sufficient prima facie evidence to indict the president," the Justice Ministry said in a statement.

The scandal erupted last year when several former staffers filed complaints with police, accusing Katsav of sex crimes. The ministry said an indictment would include the charge of raping one of the four women who accused Katsav of sexual assault.

In the statement, Attorney-General Menachem Mazuz gave Katsav a last chance to present legal arguments before a final draft of the indictment, proposing a hearing at which he promised to hear the president's response with an "open heart and a willing soul".

Asked on Channel 10 television if Katsav intended to resign, his lawyer, Sharon Nahari, said: "I think it is too early to say. What is important is that this is a very difficult day for Israel. We hope all will become clear after the hearing."

The ministry said a date for the hearing would be set soon.

While serving as president, Katsav can be put on trial only if he is impeached by parliament. He has said he would suspend himself from office if indicted.

Katsav has been president since 2000 and is due to stand down in July.

A coalition of businesses and environmental groups on Monday called for federal legislation to limit emissions of carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases. In a letter to President Bush a day before his State of the Union Address, the US Climate Action Partnership (USCAP) advocated a "cap and trade" system, in which companies whose emissions exceed mandatory limits could buy credits from companies that produce less pollution. "This approach will ensure emission reduction targets will be met while simultaneously ... stimulating investment and innovation in the technologies that will be necessary to achieve our environmental goal," USCAP wrote in A Call for Action, a 16-page report released by the group Monday. Specifically, USCAP recommended that Congress set short-term and long-term targets for cutting emissions, ranging from a 10 percent reduction within 10 years to as much as 80 percent by 2050.

Scientific research suggests that man-made greenhouse gases contribute to global warming. USCAP's 14 members include large corporations such as Alcoa, BP America, DuPont and General Electric as well as the Natural Resources Defense Council, the Pew Center on Global Climate Change and the World Resources Institute [advocacy websites]. Its report is the culmination of a year-long effort. White House press secretary Tony Snow responded to the USCAP proposal  during his daily briefing, noting that although Bush opposes mandatory CO2 limits, he will discuss alternatives to fossil fuels in his address to Congress on Tuesday. AP has more. C-SPAN has recorded video of the USCAP press conference.

Monday's opinion faulted plaintiffs for making "no compelling reason" for the Court to depart from Eldred's holding and explained the Court's stance on copyright term duration as determined by weighing the impetus provided to authors by longer terms against the benefit provided to the public by shorter terms. That weighing is left to Congress, subject to rationality review. The CTEA also retroactively extended statutory copyright protection by another 20 years beyond the original term of the author's life plus 50 years, thus decreasing the number of works entering the public domain. Ownership of orphan works is often difficult to determine, and archives such as Google, Yahoo!, and academic libraries have lobbied for less stringent copyright laws in order to increase the amount of information open to the public domain.