Melissa Wasserman

Assistant Professor
Richard and Anne Stockton Faculty Scholar
Richard W. and Marie L. Corman Scholar

Professor Wasserman’s research focuses on the institutional design of innovation policy, with a particular emphasis on patent law, administrative law, and food and drug law. Her article “The Changing Guard of Patent Law: Chevron Deference for the PTO,” forthcoming in William and Mary Law Review, argues the recent Patent Reform Act grants the PTO primary interpretive authority over the Patent Act and begins to explore some of the consequences of the PTO having the power to make law only through case-by-case adjudication. Another article, “Does Agency Funding Affect Decisionmaking?: An Empirical Assessment of the PTO’S Granting Patterns” (with Michael Frakes), 66 Vand. L. Rev. 67 (2013), examines the influence of the PTO’s fee structure of its granting behavior. Her publication "The PTO’s Asymmetric Incentives: Pressure to Expand Substantive Law," 72 Ohio St. L.J. 379 (2011), which argues that the PTO has a substantial expansionary effect on setting substantive standards, was awarded the University of Illinois College of Law’s Carroll P. Hurd Award for Excellence in Faculty Scholarship (2011). 

Professor Wasserman joined the College of Law in fall 2011 from Harvard Law School, where she was an academic fellow and lecturer at the Petrie-Flom Center for Health Law Policy, Biotechnology, and Bioethics. Following law school, Professor Wasserman clerked for Judge Kimberly A. Moore of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit. Professor Wasserman received her B.S. in chemical engineering with high honors from Pennsylvania State University. She received her Ph.D. in chemical engineering from Princeton for her work on the thermodynamics of network-forming liquids at low temperatures.  As a graduate student, Professor Wasserman was both a National Science Foundation Graduate Research Fellow and American Association of University Women Selected Professions Fellow. She received her J.D. magna cum laude from New York University School of Law, where she served as an articles editor of New York University Law Review.