Ted Sichelman

Law and Technology, Intellectual Property, Patent Law, Artificial Intelligence and Law, Business and Corporate Law

Professor Sichelman earned a Bachelor’s degree in the History of Philosophy of Science, with distinction, elected to Phi Beta Kappa, from Stanford University and a Master’s degree in Physics from Florida State University. He founded and ran a venture capital-backed software and services company, Unified Dispatch, which was later acquired by a publicly-traded company. Professor Sichelman designed the company’s software and is a named inventor on several issued and filed patents and applications.

After graduating from Harvard Law School, magna cum laude, he clerked for the Honorable A. Wallace Tashima of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit. He practiced in the areas of intellectual property litigation and appeals at the law firms of Heller Ehrman and Irell & Manella. In 2008 and 2009, he was a Kauffman Foundation Fellow at the University of California, Berkeley School of Law. He joined the USD School of Law faculty in 2009.

Professor Sichelman is the primary organizer for the School of Law’s annual patent law conference, which features prominent judges, academics, and attorneys. In addition, he has hosted The Patent Conference (PatCon), the largest annual conference for patent law academics, and the International Conference on Artificial Intelligence & Law (ICAIL), the largest, recurring academic conference on AI & Law. He has also organized and hosted numerous other events in the areas of intellectual property law and AI & Law.

Professor Sichelman has participated in a number of U.S. Supreme Court cases, including playing a substantial role in a win for an injured employee in MetLife v. Glenn (2008). He has also drafted or co-drafted amicus briefs in several Supreme Court patent cases, including TC Heartland v. Kraft Foods (2017), Impression Products v. Lexmark International (2017), Global-Tech v. SEB (2011), and Bilski v. Kappos (2010). In Bilski, the Supreme Court largely adopted the recommendations and reasoning of the brief.

In 2011, he worked with the office of U.S. Representative Zoe Lofgren to draft proposed language for the recently passed America Invents Act, the most substantial revision to the Patent Act since 1952. In 2012, he served on then-Lieutenant Governor Gavin Newsom’s task force to place a satellite office of the U.S. Patent & Trademark Office in California, which is now located in San Jose. He has drafted or co-drafted official comments and letters to Congress and agencies regarding pending intellectual property and related bills and regulations.

Professor Sichelman’s work has been highly cited. He was named the 19th most-cited IP & Cyberlaw Scholar in the U.S. in the Leiter Rankings. His publications include the 16th, 7th, 8th, and 47th most-cited law journal articles published in 2009, 2010, 2011, and 2014, respectively (according to HeinOnline as of August 2020). As of April 2016, his articles “Commercializing Patents” and “Life After Bilski,” were the first and second most-cited of all intellectual property law articles published in U.S. law journals since 2010, respectively. His article “Life After Bilski” has also been cited by the U.S. Supreme Court (Mayo v. Prometheus (2012)) and in over 30 other judicial opinions

Professor Sichelman was awarded Thorsnes Prize for Outstanding Legal Scholarship at the University of San Diego in 2016, and was named a University Professor in 2015, and a Herzog Endowed Scholar in 2012 and 2022. He is also a winner of the 2011 Stanford-Samsung Essay Contest on Patent Damages. Professor Sichelman is a licensed attorney and member of the State Bar of California.