Judge Paul R. Michel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit will be the guest speaker for the 171st commencement of The John Marshall Law School on Sunday, June 17, 2001, at Chicago's McCormick Place.

The law school will award 209 J.D. and 59 LL.M. degrees at the 3 p.m. ceremony.

Michel will address the students and receive an honorary degree from John Marshall. He is a member of the John Marshall adjunct faculty who regularly comes from Washington, D.C. to teach the "Appellate Brief -writing" course.

Michel was appointed to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit in 1988. Since joining the bench, he has written more than 200 opinions in patent, contract, international trade and other areas of the court's jurisdiction. He also serves on the Committee on Intercircuit Assignments of the U.S. Judicial Conference.

In 1999, he was presented the annual Jefferson Medal Award for "outstanding contributions…to promote the progress of science and useful arts."

Michel has authored several articles that have appeared in the American University Law Review, the Federal Circuit Bar Journal, and in American Bar Association publications. Modern Patent Litigation and Strategy, a casebook he co-authored, was published in 1999 by West Publishing Co. He also is a frequent guest speaker for law school conferences, and city and state bar groups.

Michel's appointment to the bench came after a varied career that included service as a deputy district attorney in Philadelphia, as an assistant Watergate special prosecutor, and an assistant counsel to the Senate Intelligence Committee.

In 1976, he was appointed deputy chief of the new Public Integrity Section of the U.S. Department of Justice, and from 1978 to 1981, he was associate deputy attorney general, and briefly as acting deputy attorney general. Until 1988, he was counsel and administrative assistant to Sen. Arlen Specter.

Michel is a member of the board of trustees of the National Inventor's Hall of Fame, Inc. and the advisory boards for intellectual property at George Washington University, the University of Washington and Boalt Hall (University of California at Berkeley) law schools. He recently was appointed a member of the board of directors of The Thomas More Society of America.

Professor Michael L. Closen

Activities

He has been reappointed to the Standing Committee on Illinois Supreme Court Rules of the Illinois State Bar Association for his fifth year of service. He is also an elected member of the ISBA Assembly, the legislative arm of the association.

Publications

His article "The Lost Art of Administering Notarial Oaths" has just been published in the American Notary Magazine (the publication of the American Society of Notaries), Second Quarter 2001, at page 6.

Professor Janice Mueller

Activities

She was Counsel of Record for the American Intellectual Property Law Association on the association's amicus curiae brief filed May 9th in the U.S. Supreme Court. The brief supports the petition for certiorari in Festo Corp. v. Shoketsu Kinzoku Kogyo Kabushiki Co., Ltd., 234 F.3d 558 (Fed. Cir. 2000) (en banc). In Festo the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit announced new rules for the patent law doctrine of prosecution history estoppel that significantly curtail the availability of the doctrine of equivalents.

May 21

Sedgwick Claims Management Services Training Program, Room 1200B, 8:00 a.m.

Parma Trip Reception, Room 1200A, 4:00 p.m.

May 22

Sedgwick Claims Management Services Training Program, Room 1200B, 8:00 a.m.

Illinois Native American Bar Association, Room 1200A, 5:30 p.m.

IP Paralegal Program, Room 201, 6:00 p.m.

May 24

SPC Meeting, Room 1200B, 12:00 p.m.

May 28

Memorial Day

May 30

SPC Meeting, Room 1200A, 9:00 a.m.

May 31

Hearing: FAA v Pierce J. Poyte, Moot Courtroom, 9:00 a.m.