Chicago-Kent advances to the national finals of the 2018 Saul Lefkowitz Moot Court Competition

The Chicago-Kent team of Brittany Kaplan ’19 and Evan Kline-Wedeen ’18 will advance to the national finals of the 27th annual Saul Lefkowitz Moot Court Competition, sponsored by the International Trademark Association. The team placed second overall and won the first-place best brief award at the regional tournament, held February 10, 2018, at the Dirksen Federal Courthouse in Chicago.

This year, students are arguing a case involving a trademark dispute between a fictional brewpub named Hollywood Hops and a fictional wine bar named Hollywood & Vine. At issue is whether the District Court erred in finding that the wine bar did not infringe on the brewpub’s trademark and whether the plaintiff acquiesced to defendant’s use of the word "Hollywood" in connection with defendant’s sale of wine.  

At the regional competition, the Chicago-Kent team faced off against teams from Northwestern Pritzker School of Law and the University of Wisconsin Law School. Chicago-Kent and the first-place team from Notre Dame Law School will join the top two teams from five other regions in the national finals March 17 at the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit in Washington, D.C.

Second-year student Brittany Kaplan earned an M.S. degree in journalism from Northwestern University and a B.A. degree in Journalism from Michigan State University. Third-year student Evan Kline-Wedeen graduated with a B.S. degree in bioengineering from the University of Illinois at Chicago.

The team is coached by Chicago-Kent alumna Ashly I. Boesche '04, a partner at Pattishall McAuliffe. Professor Mickie Piatt and Eliot Gusdorf '16 also helped the team prepare.

Established in 1990 by the International Trademark Association, the competition is named for the late Saul Lefkowitz, former chairman of the Trademark Trial and Appeal Board of the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office, to honor his contributions to the development of trademark law and to the education of the trademark bar. This is the third year in a row that a team from Chicago-Kent has advanced to the national finals.

Chicago-Kent currently offers a J.D. certificate program in intellectual property law and in 2002 became the first American law school to offer a one-year LL.M. degree in international intellectual property law. Chicago Kent's Program in Intellectual Property Law is currently ranked first in the country by Law Street Media.