First university patent department: University of Virginia’s

This snippet of law department history comes from the UVa Patent Foundation website, with emphasis added:

“In 1998, the Patent Foundation of the University of Virginia embarked on a new initiative to develop an in-house patent department. Over the next year, the Patent Foundation hired two in-house patent attorneys, a patent paralegal and a legal secretary. This new patent department, the first of its kind at a university, is responsible for preparing and filing patent applications for UVA inventions, and for monitoring outside counsel’s work on existing applications. The result has been outstanding reduced patent costs, more applications filed, increased inventor satisfaction, and reduced burden on licensing agents with respect to patent issues.”

Times have certainly changed, since now several university law departments boast IP law resources.