ABA-IPL at 125 years: Celebrating exhilarating accomplishments in IP

This year, the ABA Section of Intellectual Property Law (ABA-IPL) is proud to commemorate 125 years—marking a momentous time in its history and that of intellectual property (IP) law itself.

Created in August 1894 at the 17th ABA Annual Meeting in Saratoga Springs, New York, our Section, then called the Section of Patent Law, became the first substantive section of the American Bar Association. The Section gained an early start in forging its individual identity within the ABA. By the 1920s, we were addressing trademark and copyright as the Section of Patent, Trademark and Copyright Law, and we became the Section of Intellectual Property Law in 1993. Back in the beginning—just like we hear today—patent law was considered a “difficult but fascinating” area.

Read the entire article by Senior Counsel George Washington Jordan, III.

©2020. Published in Landslide, Vol. 12, No. 4, March/April 2020, by the American Bar Association. Reproduced with permission. All rights reserved. This information or any portion thereof may not be copied or disseminated in any form or by any means or stored in an electronic database or retrieval system without the express written consent of the American Bar Association or the copyright holder.