Thomas Ward
Professor of Law
B.A., University of Pennsylvania
LL.B., University of Notre Dame
LL.M., University of Illinois
Office Phone: (207) 780-4369
tward@usm.maine.edu
Professor Ward is an enthusiastic teacher who makes the workings of the law in business and commerce come alive for his students. He teaches Contracts, Commercial Law and Intellectual Property at Maine Law.
In 1976 Professor Ward came to Maine after private practice in Burlington, Vermont and four years of law teaching at the University of South Carolina. From the start, he was happy about his move to Maine. He believes that the Law School's small, high caliber student body provides a great incubator for teaching. While he remains firmly attached to Maine, Professor Ward is active and well regarded nationwide. He has been a Visiting Professor at Illinois, Notre Dame, and Seattle University. Professor Ward and his family spent the 1984-85 academic year in Ireland when he was selected to be the Jefferson Smurfit Visiting Professor of Business Law at University College Galway. In addition to summer school assignments at Illinois, Boston College, Northeastern, South Carolina and Lewis & Clark, he is a regular faculty member of the Intellectual Property Summer Institute at the Franklin Pierce Law Center.
Professor Ward currently serves as co-chair of the ABA Subcommittee on Intellectual Property Financing and as a research fellow for the Licensing Executives Society (USA and Canada). Professor Ward's published work covers a broad range of topics in the areas of commercial law, bankruptcy and intellectual property.
Recent Publications and Presentations
In November 2006, Professor Ward presented a paper on Intellectual Property Collateral as part of a Program sponsored by the Notre Dame Law School and the Indiana Bar Association at Notre Dame.
Professor Ward's paper entitled Financing Ripples in the Patent Pool was presented at Seattle University's Conference on Intellectual Property and Competition Policy held in Seattle on April 6-7, 2006.
In April 2005, he served as faculty moderator for the three-day Annual Seminar of the Financial Lawyers Conference in Indian Wells, California. The 2005 Annual Seminar topic was "Intellectual Property Assets in Commercial Law and Bankruptcy."
In March 2005, he was co-moderator for a program on "Financing in the Music Industry" presented by the ABA Subcommittee on Intellectual Property Financing at the Annual Meeting of the ABA Business Law Section in Nashville, Tennessee.
In April 2004, Professor Ward led a panel discussion on "Assignability and Negotiability of Intellectual Property Licenses" presented by the Subcommittee on Intellectual Property Financing at the Annual Meeting of the ABA Business Law Section in Seattle.
Professor Ward's paper on "Contractual and Statutory Royalties under Section 365(n) of the Bankruptcy Code" was presented on August 5, 2003 to the ABA Business Law Section at the ABA Annual Meeting in San Francisco.
Professor Ward's treatise, Intellectual Property in Commerce, is in its sixth revised edition (West Group, rev. ed. 2006); and his article, "Perfection and Priority Rules for Security Interests in Copyrights, Patents and Trademarks: The Current Structural Dissonance and Proposed Legislative Cures," appears at 53 Me. L. Rev. 391 (2002).
Photo by Dominique Mattozzi
