News & Events

Prof. Gregory N. Mandel from Temple University Delivers Talk at NLSIU

April 25, 2024

Professor Gregory N. Mandel, one of the leading scholars in the field of intellectual property and Provost, Temple University (Philadelphia, US), had an interaction with NLSIU students on April 18, 2024 on the topic “Hindsight bias in patent law”. With the help of an in-class experiment, wherein students were randomly divided into two groups, the probability of hindsight bias in obviousness determination was illustrated to the students. This was followed by a discussion on the potential consequences of such bias for different areas of patent law. He also discussed some of the potential options for mitigating the challenge of hindsight bias.

About Prof. Mandel 

Provost Mandel is a leading international scholar on intellectual property law, innovation, and the interface among technology and law. His publications have been selected as among the best intellectual property and patent law articles of the year three times. His article Patently Non-Obvious was identified as one of the most cited patent law articles of the past decade, and his experimental studies have been cited by the Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit and in briefs filed before the United States Supreme Court.

Mandel was awarded a three-year grant from the National Science Foundation to conduct a series of experiments on the psychology of intellectual property in the United States and China. He has served on the Executive Committee of the Intellectual Property Section of the American Association of Law Schools, an American Bar Association task force to brief the Environmental Protection Agency on arising nanotechnology legal issues, and is the recipient of a Fulbright Senior Specialist grant to teach U.S. intellectual property law to foreign law students. Provost Mandel is the author of over fifty scholarly publications and has given more than 175 presentations, including for the United Nations, National Academy of Sciences, American Bar Association, American Psychology Association, Environmental Protection Agency, Second Circuit and Federal Circuit, Patent and Trademark Office, and the European Commission.

Mandel was President of the Board of The Miquon School from 2013-2015 and on the Board for six years. His pro bono legal work includes a prominent asylum case before the Attorney General of the United States and the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals. Provost Mandel served as the law school’s Associate Dean for Research from 2009-2016 and was Associate Dean for Research and Professor of Law at Albany Law School prior to joining Temple. Before entering academia, he practiced law with Skadden, Arps, Slate, Meagher & Flom LLP, clerked for Judge Jerome Farris, United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit, and interned with Chief Judge Anthony J. Scirica, United States Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit. Provost Mandel worked on NASA’s Hubble Space Telescope prior to attending law school. He received his J.D. from Stanford Law School and his bachelor’s degree from Wesleyan University with a double major in Physics and Astronomy. (Information Source: Temple University)