University of Georgia
School of Law
307 Hirsch Hall
Athens, GA 30602
United States
B.A., St. John's College
M.S., J.D., Northwestern University
Intellectual Property Survey
Property
Common Law Jurisprudence
Jurisprudence seminars
Joseph S. Miller, who specializes in intellectual property law, was awarded Ernest P. Rogers Chair of Intellectual Property and Unfair Competition Law in August 2021. He was elected to the American Law Institute in December 2021.
A UGA faculty member since 2011, he has taught various courses related to intellectual property — including the Survey course as well as Patent Law and Antitrust Law — and advised many student papers on IP topics (for the Journal of Intellectual Property Law as well as for the other journals at the UGA School of Law). The Intellectual Property Law casebook he has long co-authored with Professor Lydia Loren, now in its 7th edition (2021), is used at many law schools across the country. Miller has also taught numerous jurisprudence courses, such as a seminar on the nature of stare decisis and a continuing course titled Common Law Jurisprudence.
Much of Miller’s scholarship has focused on intellectual property law and the larger legal frameworks that structure competition in a market economy. Since 2017, using the Supreme Court’s IP jurisprudence as a springboard, he has written a series of articles using computational network analysis techniques to map the Supreme Court’s citation and co-citation networks. The network analysis approach permits one to identify doctrinal contours in the cases from the bottom up, rather than assume their location from the top down. Most recently, he has used network analysis to measure, map and compare the citation networks immanent in two justices’ separate opinions as an innovative way to assess judicial ideology, building a new bridge that connects traditional doctrinal analysis to judicial-vote measures of ideology (e.g., Martin-Quinn scores) that are popular in the political science literature. His work has appeared in the general law reviews at Akron, American, Cardozo, Catholic, Indiana, Kansas, Lewis & Clark and Pittsburgh as well as in the IP journals at Berkeley, Chicago-Kent, Stanford, Texas and UCLA.
He came to Athens from Lewis & Clark Law School, where he taught from 2002 to 2011. Miller started his teaching career in 2001 as a visiting assistant professor at Northwestern University School of Law, his alma mater.
Before teaching, Miller worked as an attorney in the Antitrust Division of the U.S. Department of Justice, where he helped with a variety of investigations that included intellectual property law components. Additionally, he practiced both patent and general appellate law at Sidley & Austin and served as a judicial clerk for Judge Paul R. Michel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit. He was later appointed to the Federal Circuit Advisory Council, a post he held for five years.
Miller earned his bachelor's degree from St. John's College, where he graduated first in his class, and his master's degree and law degree cum laude from Northwestern University, where he was an articles editor of the Northwestern University Law Review.
ARTICLES
A Judge Never Writes More Freely: A Separate-Opinions-Network Approach to Assessing Judicial Ideology, 2022 Mich. St. L. Rev. 901.
Two Centuries of Trademark and Copyright Law: A Citation-Network-Analysis Approach, 20 Chi.-Kent J. Intell. Prop. 336 (2020).
U.S. Supreme Court I.P. Cases, 1810-2019: Measuring & Mapping the Citation Networks, 69 Cath. U. L. Rev. 537 (2020)
Law's Semantic Self-Portrait: Discerning Doctrine with Co-Citation Networks and Keywords, 81 U. Pitt. L. Rev. 1 (2019).
Brandeis's I.P. Federalism: Thoughts on Erie at Eighty, 52 Akron L. Rev. 367 (2019).
Charting Supreme Court Patent Law, Near and Far, 17 Chi.-Kent J. Intell. Prop. 2 (2018).
Which Supreme Court Cases Influenced Recent Supreme Court IP Decisions? A Citation Study 21 UCLA J.L. & Tech. 1 (2017).
Reasonable Certainty & Corpus Linguistics: Judging Definiteness After Nautilus & Teva, 66 U. Kan. L. Rev. 39 (2017).
The Immorality of Requesting Expedited Review, 21 Lewis & Clark L. Rev. 211 (2017).
Abercrombie 2.0 - Can We Get There from Here? The Thoughts on 'Suggestive Fair Use', 77 Ohio St. L.J. Furthermore 1 (2016).
The Idea of the Casebook: Pedagogy, Prestige, and Trusty Platforms, 11 Wash. J. L. Tech. & Arts 31 (2015) (with L. Loren).
Error Costs & IP Law, 2014 U. Ill. L. Rev. 175 (2014).
Joint Defense or Research Joint Venture? Reassessing the Patent-Challenge-Bloc's Antitrust Status, 2011 Stan. Tech. L. Rev. 5 (2011).
Substance, Procedure, and the Divided Patent Power, 63 Admin. L. Rev. 31 (2011).
Bilski v. Kappos: Everything Old is New Again, 15 Lewis & Clark L. Rev. 1 (2011).
Hoisting Originality, 31 Cardozo L. Rev. 451 (2009).
Level of Skill and Long-felt Need: Notes on a Forgotten Future, 12 Lewis & Clark L. Rev. 579 (2008).
Remixing Obviousness, 16 Texas Intell. Prop. L.J. 237 (2007).
Standard Setting, Patents, and Access Lock-In: RAND Licensing and the Theory of the Firm, 40 Indiana L. Rev. 351 (2007).
Patent Ships Sail an Antitrust Sea, 30 Seattle U. L. Rev. 395 (2007).
Foreword: Why Open Access to Scholarship Matters, 10 Lewis & Clark L. Rev. 733 (2006).
The Proven Key: Roles and Rules for Dictionaries at the Patent Office and the Courts, 54 Am. U. L. Rev. 829 (2005) (with James Hilsenteger).
Enhancing Patent Disclosure for Faithful Claim Construction, 9 Lewis & Clark L. Rev. 177 (2005).
Building a Better Bounty: Litigation-Stage Rewards for Defeating Patents, 19 Berkeley Tech. L.J. 667 (2004).
This Bitter Has Some Sweet: Potential Antitrust Enforcement Benefits from Patent Law's Procedural Rules, 70 Antitrust L.J. 875 (2003).
Allchin's Folly: Exploding Some Myths About Open Source Software, 20 Cardozo Arts & Ent. L.J. 491 (2002).
Muddy Waters: Infringement Analysis After Markman and Warner-Jenkinson, 7 Fed. Cir. B.J. 227 (1997) (with Clyde Willian).
The Expert as Educator: Enhancing the Rationality of Verdicts in Child Sex Abuse Prosecutions, 1 Psychol., Pub. Pol'y, & L. 323 (1995) (with Ronald J. Allen).
The Common Law Theory of Experts: Deference or Education?, 87 Nw. U. L. Rev. 1131 (1993) (Ronald J. Allen).
BOOKS
INTELLECTUAL PROPERTY LAW: CASES & MATERIALS (3d ed. 2012) (with L. Loren).
INTELLECTUAL PROPERTY LAW: CASES & MATERIALS (2d ed. 2010) (with L. Loren).
PATENTS (Critical Concepts in Intellectual Property Law Series) (2010) (editor).
CHAPTERS
The Expert as Educator, in EXPERT WITNESSES IN CHILD ABUSE CASES (Ceci & Hembrooke eds., 1998) (with Ronald J. Allen).
OTHER PUBLICATIONS
Patent Office Power: Tafas v. Doll, and Next Steps, OR. INTELL. PROP. NEWSLETTER, Spring 2009, at 6.
IP Policy as Governance Structure: A Fresh Look at the RAND Promise, in THE STANDARDS EDGE: GOLDEN MEAN (2006).
Another Fall, Another Festo, OR. INTELL. PROP. NEWSLETTER, Winter 2003, at 11.
The Historical Roots of Patent Prosecution Laches, OR. INTELL. PROP. NEWSLETTER, Spring 2002, at 8.