Post Date: October 18, 2003

Professor William Fisher III has been named the Hale and Dorr Professor of Intellectual Property Law, Harvard Law School Dean Elena Kagan announced. The Hale and Dorr chair was established in October 2002 in connection with a gift from the Boston-based law firm.

“Terry Fisher is the ideal candidate to hold this chair in intellectual property law,” said Kagan. “His scholarship and teaching will shape our understanding of this important field far into the future.”

To celebrate the appointment, on Wednesday, October 15 Fisher delivered a lecture to the HLS community titled “The Disaggregation of Intellectual Property.” During his remarks, Fisher examined the enormous growth in the three fields of intellectual property—copyright, patent, and trademark—over the past 200 years, and addressed the pros and cons of developing specific intellectual property regimes for different industries. Fisher’s forthcoming book is titled, “Technology, Law, and the Future of Entertainment.”

An expert in intellectual property, Internet law, trademark, and legal history, Fisher joined the Harvard Law faculty as an assistant professor in 1984 and became a tenured professor in 1991.