Education

• Purdue University B.S. 1986
• Indiana University Maurer School of Law J.D. 1989

Courses

• Advanced Patent Law (B517)
• Intellectual Property Externship (B551)
• Intellectual Property Survey
• Patent Law (B743)
• Patent Trial Practice
• Trademark and Unfair Competition Law (B758)
• Seminar in Intellectual Property (L730)
• Intellectual Property Colloquium

Background

• Member, American Law Institute, 2018 –
• Recipient of Leon H. Wallace Teaching Award, 2013
• Co-hosted a conference, "The Future of Design Protection," at Jesus College, Oxford University of Oxford, November 2012
• Filed an amicus brief with the U.S. Supreme Court in Retractable Technologies, Inc., et al., v. Becton, Dickinson and Company (with Donald E. Knebel, Timothy R. Holbrook and Todd G. Vare) (May 2012).
• Winner, 2008 Ladas Award (from International Trademark Association) for the article Confusion Over Use: Contextualism in Trademark Law, 92 IOWA L. REV. 1599 (2007) (with Graeme B. Dinwoodie).
• Visiting Instructor, Munich Intellectual Property Center (January 2008-present); Oxford University and University of Victoria (British Columbia) School of Law summer IP law program (summer 2002-2007); Summer Institute, Center for Advanced Study and Research in Intellectual Property (CASRIP), University of Washington School of Law, Seattle, WA (July 1999).

Biography

Mark D. Janis teaches courses in patents, trademarks, and other areas of intellectual property law. He is the Robert A. Lucas Chair of Law and the Director of the Center for Intellectual Property Research. Janis has authored a number of books, including the treatise IP and Antitrust (with Hovenkamp, Lemley, Leslie, and Carrier), Intellectual Property Protection for Plants (with Jervis and Peet), Trademarks and Unfair Competition in a Nutshell, three casebooks (Trademarks and Unfair Competition: Law and Policy and Trade Dressand Design Law, both with Dinwoodie; and Patent Law: An Open Access Casebook, with Sichelman). With Graeme Dinwoodie, he has edited several additional collections of trademark law scholarship. He has published numerous law review articles and book chapters on patent law, intellectual property and antitrust, trademark law, intellectual property protection for plants, and intellectual property protection for designs.

Janis has won awards for his teaching at Indiana (the Leon H. Wallace Teaching Award and the Trustees Teaching Award) and at Iowa (the Collegiate Teaching Award).  At Iowa, he also was awarded a Faculty Scholar Award. In 2008, he and Prof. Dinwoodie won the International Trademark Association’s Ladas Award Winner for the article Confusion Over Use: Contextualism in Trademark Law, 92 Iowa L. Rev. 1599 (2007).  In 2018, he was elected to the American Law Institute.

He has taught as a visiting instructor in intellectual property programs at the Munich Intellectual Property Center; Oxford University; the University of Victoria (British Columbia); and the University of Washington School of Law.

Prior to joining the faculty at Indiana, Professor Janis was the H. Blair & Joan V. White Chair in Intellectual Property Law at the University of Iowa College of Law. He practiced patent law at Barnes & Thornburg (Indianapolis) from 1989 to 1995.

Selected works

• Trademarks & Unfair Competition: Law & Policy (7th ed. 2026) (with Dinwoodie and McKenna)
• Design Patent Law’s Three Little Words, 100 Ind.L.J. 1831 (2025)
• Design Patent Infringement as Unfair Competition, 66 Wm. & Mary L. Rev. 1155 (2025) (reprinted in …)
• The Debate over Second Tier Patent Protection in the U.S. (Cambridge Univ. Press 2025) (with Contreras) (in Contreras, ed., Sub-Patent Innovation Rights: Utility Models, Petty Patents and Innovation Patents Around the World)
• Trademark & Unfair Competition Law in a Nutshell (West) (4th Ed. 2025)
• Patent Law: An Open Access Casebook (LawCarta Pub. Update 2025) (with Sichelman et al.)
• IP and Antitrust Law: An Analysis of Antitrust Principles Applied to Intellectual Property Law (Wolters Kluwer) (Updates 2025) (with Hovenkamp, Lemley, Carrier, and Leslie)
• Relative and Absolute Patentability, 69 Wake Forest L. Rev. 641 (2024) (with Holbrook)
• How the Supreme Court Ghosted the PHOSITA: Amgen and Legal Constructs in Patent Law, 109 Iowa L. Rev. Online 83 (2024) (with Holbrook)
• Design Patent Nonobviousness: The Road Ahead?, 109 Iowa L. Rev. Online 128 (2024)
• Secondary Liability in U.S. Trademark Law: The Ambivalent Legacy of Warner v. Lilly, in Bently & Bone, Historical Perspectives on Trademark Law (Elgar 2024)
• Trade Dress and Design Law(Aspen) (with Dinwoodie and Du Mont) (2d Ed. 2024)
• A Closer Look at the “Eye” Test: The British Origins of American Design Patent Infringement Law, 13 IP Theory 56 (2023-24)
• TRADEMARKS AND UNFAIR COMPETITION: LAW AND POLICY, 5th Ed.(with Graeme B. Dinwoodie). New York: Wolters Kluwer Law & Business, 2018.
• How Should Damages be Calculated for Design Patent Infringement?, 37  REV. LITIG. 241 (2018).
• IP AND ANTITRUST LAW: AN ANALYSIS OF ANTITRUST PRINCIPLES APPLIED TO INTELLECTUAL PROPERTY LAW  (3d. ed. 2016) (with Hovenkamp, Lemley, Leslie, and Carrier) (with annual updates).
• INTELLECTUAL PROPERTY LAW OF PLANTS (with Jervis and Peet) (Oxford 2014).
• TRADE DRESS AND DESIGN LAW (with Dinwoodie) (2010).
• Mr. Nicholson’s Cane, 59 ARIZ. L. REV. 647 (2017).
• Disclosing Designs, 69 VAND. L. REV. 1631 (2016) (with Du Mont).
• Expressive Eligibility, 5 CAL. IRVINE L. REV. 973 (2015) (with Holbrook).
• Virtual Designs, 17 STANFORD TECH. L. REV. 107 (2013) (with Du Mont).
• The Origins of American Design Patent Protection, 88 IND. L.J. 837 (2013) (with Du Mont)
• Patent Law’s Audience, 97 MINN. L. REV. 72 (2012) (with Holbrook).

Interests

• Patent Law
• Trademark Law
• Design Patent Law
• Intellectual Property Law of Plants
• Intellectual Property/Antitrust

Related links

• SSRN
• ORCID
• Publications

Areas of expertise

• Intellectual property law