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Professor Jorda was a corporate patent and trademark lawyer at Miles Laboratories (now Bayer) in Indiana, and the Chief IP Counsel at CIBA-GEIGY Corporation (now Novartis) in New York. He is a former President of the New York Intellectual Property Law Association and the Pacific Intellectual Property Association (PIPA), as well as the recipient of the 1989 PIPA Medal for "Outstanding Contributions to International Cooperation in the Intellectual Property Field." Professor Jorda is also a former member of the Board of Directors, Council, or Executive Committee of: the American Intellectual Property Law Association; the American Bar Association, Intellectual Property Section; the Association of Corporate Patent Counsel; Intellectual Property Owners; the International Trademark Association; and the International Intellectual Property Law Association (AIPPI United States).

Other professional activities include heading up several delegations of US patent counsel at Japanese Patent Office meetings, serving as consultant to Indonesian and Bulgarian Patent Offices, and participating in World Intellectual Property Organization symposia around the world as well as conducting their annual two-week academy for officials from developing countries in 1993 and 1994.

Between 1999 and 2005 he served as the US Representative to the Confidentiality Commission (Commission on the Settlement of Disputes Relating to Confidentiality) of the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW), the implementing body of the Chemical Weapons Convention (CWC), located in The Hague, Holland.

Professor Jorda also served as Adjunct Professor at the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy, Tufts University, Medford, Massachusetts, teaching International IP Law between 1995 and 2003. In 1997 and 1998, as Co-Director of a Joint Degree Program in IP Law between Gulf Institute for International Law (GIIL) and Pierce Law, he taught Patent and Trade Secret Law, International IP Law and IP Licensing at GIIL in Dubai, United Arab Emirates.

In addition to his many other honors, Professor Jorda was awarded the 1996 Jefferson Medal. Presented annually by the New Jersey Intellectual Property Law Association, the Jefferson Medal is the highest award in the IP field. It is given to one person for exceptional contributions to the American intellectual property law system; and only two other law professors have ever received it.

Professor Jorda teaches Technology Licensing and Intellectual Property Management. He also directs the activities of the Germeshausen Center for the Law of Innovation and Entrepreneurship. He conducts the annual one-week Advanced Licensing Institute in July, and a two-day Comprehensive Patent Cooperation Treaty Seminar in April.

"With over 30 years of corporate practice in intellectual property and licensing behind me, and after heading up CIBA-GEIGY's intellectual property operation for 26 years, the question of whether or not to take early retirement had crossed my mind. The obvious alternatives were retiring to stay retired, leaving to join a law firm as 'of counsel,' or staying on at CIBA-GEIGY for several more years.

But the very best alternative of them all, namely, to become an 'academic' and teach what I had practiced, did not occur to me at all, until Homer Blair asked me to consider replacing him as the David Rines Professor. What an interesting and challenging position this turned out to be! Two realizations made it all easier, i.e., that one can talk about something one has done for over 30 years; and that teaching - teaching inventors, R&D staffs, management, members of the Patent Department, and Examiners of the Patent Office, etc. - is an important part of running an intellectual property operation. Teaching at the Law Center is great fun; students are dedicated and committed; the faculty and staff are cooperative and supportive. In short, the Law Center is just one happy family!"

IP Management Syllabus - spring 2008
Technology Licensing Syllabus - fall 2007