About RIPL

UIC Review of Intellectual Property Law (RIPL) is a Chicago-based online law review that publishes scholarly articles, comments, case notes, and blogs on intellectual property, information technology, and privacy law-related topics. RIPL comprises of top students participating in the internationally recognized intellectual property, information technology, and privacy law programs at the UIC Law. Many RIPL students possess a technical background–with degrees ranging from a bachelor of science to Ph.D–and have experience in trade secret, patent, trademark, information technology, privacy, and copyright law.

RIPL broke on to the law review scene in 2001. RIPL has been at the forefront of intellectual property, and now information technology and privacy law, ever since. For the past decade, the law library at the Washington and Lee School of Law has ranked RIPL in the top 10 among intellectual property law journals in the world, with RIPL being ranked in the top 5 for seven of those years. For 2019, Washington and Lee ranked RIPL the number 3 journal in the world for intellectual property law. Additionally, RIPL has also been ranked as the 12th most cited technology law journal in the country according to Google Scholar. Indeed, RIPL has been cited as persuasive authority by the United States Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit and parties petitioning the United States Supreme Court for a writ of certiorari. In addition to articles written by a number of prominent IP practitioners, RIPL issues have included contributions from:

  • Justice John Paul Stevens, Supreme Court of the United States
  • Former Chief Judge Paul Michel and Judge Richard Linn, United States Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit
  • Judge Richard Posner, United States Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit
  • Chief Judge James F. Holderman, United States District Court for the Northern District of Illinois
  • Q. Todd Dickinson, Former Under Secretary of Commerce for Intellectual Property and Director of the United States Patent and Trademark Office
  • John Calvert, Senior Advisor to the Office of Innovation Development, United States Patent and Trademark Office
  • Marybeth Peters and Ralph Oman, Former United States Registers of Copyrights
  • Donald Chisum, Robert Harmon, Edward Manzo and Shubha Ghosh, Authors
  • Professors Harold Wegner, Janice Mueller, Kenneth Port, Graeme Dinwoodie, and Tyler Ochoa

As an online journal, RIPL outpaces traditional print journals by efficiently producing and electronically publishing quality articles. This provides authors with the opportunity to publish timely articles before other reviews. The high quality and timeliness of RIPL’s articles have attracted subscribers from all over the world, including the United States, Mexico, Canada, Australia, Tanzania, Poland, England, Spain, Japan, China, and Israel. RIPL’s issues are delivered electronically to its subscribers and are available on LexisNexis and Westlaw, as well as on this website.

Further, RIPL is willing to convert a transcribed speech into a publishable article. RIPL also welcomes practitioners, academics, and other legal professionals to publish short, blog-style articles on our website or social media pages. RIPL’s editorial staff looks forward to working with you in the future.