The Engelberg Center celebrates the work of Rochelle Dreyfuss at DreyFEST

On March 24, NYU Law’s Engelberg Center on Innovation Law & Policy hosted a conference—entitled DreyFEST—to honor Rochelle Dreyfuss, Pauline Newman Professor of Law, as she assumes emerita status. The all-day conference, celebrating the Engelberg Center’s founding director, explored Dreyfuss’s innovative multidisciplinary work and its influence.

Rochelle Dreyfuss
Rochelle Dreyfuss

Dreyfuss, who worked as a research chemist before graduating first in her class from Columbia Law School, joined the NYU Law faculty in 1983. Forty years later, said Dean Troy McKenzie ’00 in his opening remarks, Dreyfuss’s work “has had sweeping impacts across many fields: patent law, copyright, intellectual property, the federal courts…. In that time, she helped to establish NYU as home for scholarship on intellectual property and innovation more broadly.” 

McKenzie read a letter from Alfred Engelberg ’65, the Engelberg Center’s benefactor, who announced a major gift to establish the Rochelle Dreyfuss Special Projects Fund at the center. “Rochelle’s renown as an expert in patent law has...been instrumental in establishing the reputation of the Engelberg Center as a global thought leader on IP issues,” Engelberg wrote. “It helped NYU attract an IP faculty that is second to none and made the Law School the preeminent place to study IP law.” 

Dreyfuss has taught courses on topics as varied as civil procedure, patent law, innovation policy, and international intellectual property law. She served as a reporter for the American Law Institute’s Project on Intellectual Property: Principles Governing Jurisdiction, Choice of Law, and Judgments in Transnational Disputes, and is an adviser on its Restatement Third of Conflicts of Law project. 

Dreyfuss has consulted for the Federal Courts Study Committee, the Presidential Commission on Catastrophic Nuclear Accidents, and the Federal Trade Commission, and has served on several National Academy of Sciences committees. She was a member of the Secretary of the Department of Health & Human Services’ Advisory Committee on Genetics, Health, and Society, and of the Bureau of National Affairs’ Advisory Board to United States Patent Quarterly. Dreyfuss has also written or co-written a number of books and dozens of chapters and articles in her multiple areas of specialty. After helping to found the Engelberg Center in 1996, she has remained active within it ever since.

The conference included five panels to encompass Dreyfuss’s multifarious scholarship, including international law, patent doctrine, trade secrecy, courts and jurisdiction, and IP polycentrism. In addition to several of Dreyfuss’s Law School colleagues, a range of NYU Law alumni spoke at the event: 

  • Barton Beebe, John M. Desmarais Professor of Intellectual Property Law
  • Jeanne Fromer, Walter J. Derenberg Professor of Intellectual Property Law
  • Christopher Jon Sprigman, Murray and Kathleen Bring Professor of Law
  • Katherine Strandburg, Alfred B. Engelberg Professor of Law
     
  • Professor Michael Burstein ’04, Benjamin N. Cardozo School of Law
  • Judge Raymond Chen ’94, US Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit
  • John Desmarais ’88, Desmarais LLP
  • Patricia Martone ’73, Affiliate Fellow, Engelberg Center on Innovation Law & Policy
  • Associate Clinical Professor Christopher Morten ’15, Columbia Law School
  • Professor Ryan Vacca LLM ’08, University of New Hampshire Franklin Pierce School of Law
  • Professor Melissa Feeney Wasserman ’07, University of Texas at Austin School of Law

Addressing the conference at its close, Dreyfuss reflected on her field’s remarkable growth over her career and her plans to continue her scholarship. “I think IP became a lot more important, and we started seeing doctrinal scholarship and theoretical scholarship and normative and empirical and experimental, and the field’s just become so rich and so wonderful…. It’s hard to leave—so I won’t, of course—but I’ve learned so much from all of you, and it’s been just incredible to learn so much from my students and to see so many of them here.”

Listen to audio recordings of the DreyFEST panels via the Engelberg Center Live! podcast:

DreyFEST: International Panel

DreyFEST: Patent Panel

DreyFEST: Trade Secret Panel

DreyFEST: Courts and Jurisdiction Panel

DreyFEST: IP Polycentrism Panel

Posted April 12, 2023