McAndrews Held & Malloy Attorney Christopher V. Carani Appointed as Adjunct Professor at Northwestern University School of Law

09.10.15

McAndrews, Held & Malloy Shareholder Christopher V. Carani was recently appointed to the faculty of the Northwestern University School of Law. Beginning the Fall 2015 semester, Carani will serve as an adjunct professor in the Master of Science in Law program.

Carani will instruct the course entitled IP Fundamentals, which will introduce the laws that create and delimit property rights in intangible goods such as inventions, expressive works, brand identifiers, and information. During the course, Carani will cover the various areas of IP law, including utility patents, design patents, copyrights, trademarks, trade dress and trade secrets. He will provide students with insights on strategic ways to protect and enforce those rights.                                        

“Chris’s technical background, combined with his breadth of experience as a highly regarded IP lawyer, makes him an especially well-qualified adjunct professor,” said Professor Leslie A. Oster, Director of Northwestern University’s Master of Science in Law program. “We are thrilled to have an instructor of Chris’s caliber teaching in the program.”

To address the complex intellectual property, legal and regulatory environment facing technology professionals and entrepreneurs, Northwestern University’s School of Law established the Master of Science in Law degree, designed to provide focused, practical and business-centered legal training to STEM professionals. In 2015, Northwestern University School of Law was ranked 12th in U.S. News & World Report’s “Best Law Schools” ranking. 

Christopher V. Carani, Esq. practices in all areas of intellectual property. He is a leading voice and internationally recognized in the field of Design IP (design patents, trade dress and copyrights), having litigated numerous design disputes, and published and lectured extensively on the topic. He represents some of the world’s most design centric companies, including the top filer of U.S. design patents. He counsels a wide range of clients on strategic design protection and enforcement issues, often called upon to render infringement, validity and design-around opinions.  Carani has worked with clients securing over 2,000 design rights, both in the U.S and in over 70 countries around the world. He is the current chair of the International Association for the Protection of Intellectual Property Design Rights Committee and the immediate past Chair of the American Bar Association’s Design Rights Committee, and the past chair of the American Intellectual Property Law Association’s Committee on Industrial Designs. He has litigated numerous disputes regarding design rights and has served as a legal consultant and expert witness in design law cases in a wide range of industries, including consumer electronics and accessories, consumer retail products, furniture, medical devices, apparel, footwear, and sporting goods, to name a few. In addition, Carani has authored amicus briefs for landmark U.S. design patent cases, such as Egyptian Goddess v. Swisa, Lawman Armor Corp. v. Winner Int’l LLC, Calmar, Inc. v. Arminak & Assoc. and Richardson v. Stanley Works, Inc. Carani earned an engineering degree from Marquette University and a law degree from the University of Chicago, and went on to serve as a law clerk to the Honorable Rebecca Pallmeyer at the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Illinois. He is a registered patent attorney and licensed to practice before the USPTO.

Carani is an Adjunct Professor of Law at the Northwestern University School of Law teaching intellectual property law. He is a frequent contributor to CNN on intellectual property law issues, and is often called upon to provide commentary to other major media outlets, including New York Times, Wall Street Journal, Forbes, NPR, PBS TV, CNBC TV, BBC, Bloomberg TV, and Reuters. Away from the law, Chris is a studied jazz musician who plays upright bass on the Chicago jazz circuit. Follow Carani (@ccarani) on Twitter: https://twitter.com/ccarani.