Jordana Goodman

Jordana R. Goodman

Assistant Professor

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Jordana R. Goodman joined Chicago-Kent College of Law as an assistant professor in August 2023. Goodman is an expert on gender and race equity issues in STEM fields. Her research explores the intersection of diversity, equity, and inclusion and intellectual property law.

After passing the United States Patent and Trademark Office’s patent bar, Goodman worked as a patent prosecutor for six years, writing patent applications to develop portfolios for a variety of clients at Sunstein, Kann, Murphy & Timbers LLP, and later at Danielson Legal LLC—both based in Boston, MA.

Goodman began teaching legal research and writing at the New England School of Law in 2020 and worked as a visiting clinical assistant professor and lecturer at Boston University School of Law from 2021–2023. She also serves as innovator in residence at Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

Goodman has an extensive bibliography of published works and is often invited to give presentations and lectures on inventorship representation and diversity at law schools and conferences across the country. In 2022, she was awarded a Rhodes Early Career Scholarship.

Prior to entering the legal realm, Goodman earned her B.S., magna cum laude, in chemistry and anthropology from Brandeis University in Waltham, MA. During that time, she acted as a chemistry laboratory researcher for Christine Thomas. She was awarded her J.D., cum laude, from Boston University School of Law in 2015.

Education

M.S., Worcester Polytechnic Institute

J.D., Boston University School of Law

B.S., Brandeis University

Publications

Law Review Publications

Access to Justice for Black Inventors, (forthcoming Vanderbilt Law Review 2024), co-authored with Khamal Patterson

Ms. Attribution: How Authorship Credit Contributes to the Gender Gap, 25 Yale J.L. & Tech 309 (2023)

Who Benefits?: How the AIA Hurt Deceptively Non-Joined Inventors, 50 Hofstra L.R. 735 (2022)

Sy-STEM-ic Bias: An Exploration of Race and Gender Representation on University Patents, 87 BROOKLYN LAW REVIEW 853 (2022)

Homography of Inventorship: DABUS and Valuing Inventors, 20 DUKE JOURNAL OF LAW AND TECHNOLOGY 1 (2022)

Patenting Frankenstein’s Monster: Exploring the Patentability of Artificial Organ Systems and Methodologies, 15 NORTHWESTERN JOURNAL OF TECHNOLOGY & INTELLECTUAL PROPERTY 35 (2017)

Alice Corp. v. CLS Bank Int’l, 21 BOSTON UNIVERSITY JOURNAL OF SCIENCE & TECHNOLOGY LAW 224 (2015)

Peer-Reviewed Publication

Addressing Patent Gender Disparities, SCIENCE (2022)

Other Publications

Seven Steps to Increase Patent Inventorship Equity, TECHNOLOGY TRANSFER TACTICS (2022)

Media Appearances

Jordana Goodman on Authorship Credit and the Gender Gap, Ipse Dixit Podcast (Interview with Saurabh Vishnubhakat) (2022)
Young Female Attorneys Lacking Fair Credit for Work Suffer Later, Bloomberg Law, IP Law (Deep Dive by Matthew Bultman) (2022)

Contact Information

Media Appearances

Assistant Professor Jordana Goodman Highlights Gender and Race Gaps in Patent Applications

Jordana Goodman, an assistant professor at the Chicago-Kent College of Law who studies equity in the science, technology, engineering and mathematics fields, points to experiences of Bruce Boyd and Brigitte Gopou as indications of underlying factors in patent gaps. Their hair sculpting tool used to style dreadlocks ultimately secured a patent “only for the method of using the product and not the product itself, so it’s easier for people to produce knock-offs in the United States and not get in as much trouble with litigation”.

Financial Times

Assistant Professor Jordana Goodman Discusses Gender Disparity in Patent Law

“A lot of people think that you need a STEM degree in order to practice patent litigation, and that’s just not true,” said Jordana R. Goodman, an assistant professor at the Illinois Institute of Technology’s Chicago-Kent College of Law. “But even among law professors, I find people discouraging people” from a career in patent litigation “simply because of their undergraduate degree, and that’s really disheartening.”

Bloomberg Law

Chicago-Kent College of Law Assistant Professor Jordana Goodman on Attribution Norms

“I look at who was hired at a law firm and who is actively practicing in that law firm as my baseline, and then I look to the gender gap of who is signing office actions and patent applications — that is, who is getting credit,” Assistant Professor Jordana Goodman said about her research, which has been published in the Yale Journal of Law & Technology. “That is the gap that I am talking about, the gap between people who are present and people who are credited.”

Ipse Dixit