Our Mission
The Engelberg Center on Innovation Law & Policy provides a unique environment where scholars can examine the key drivers of innovation as well as the law and policy that best support innovation. By fostering interdisciplinary and collaborative research on innovation law and policy, the Engelberg Center attracts legal scholars and practitioners, technologists, economists, social scientists, physical scientists, historians, innovators, and industry experts who study, theoretically and empirically, the incentives that motivate innovators, how those incentives vary among different types of creative endeavor, and the laws and policies that help or hinder them. The Engelberg Center endeavors to facilitate programming, publications, and other interactions that refine our understanding of the policy implications of this research and communicate those implications to stakeholders and decision-makers, both nationally and internationally.
In addition to the world-class faculty and scholars it attracts, the Engelberg Center draws on the diversity of New York City, which is a center for creativity in advertising, art, cuisine, entertainment, fashion, financial services, graphic design, law, life sciences, literature, marketing, music, and technology, among other fields. We seek to enhance the ecosystem that supports close connections between IP scholars and the innovator community in and around the city.
Alfred B. Engelberg
The Engelberg Center is named for Alfred B. Engelberg, a 1965 cum laude graduate of NYU School of Law.
Engelberg is widely regarded as the legal father of the modern generic drug industry for his work on the Hatch-Waxman Act, which created the framework for the explosive growth in generic drug use. He was a pioneer in challenging improperly granted drug patents that blocked generic competition on important medicines.
Engelberg received a B.S. in Chemical Engineering from Drexel University in 1961 and worked in every aspect of patent law over a career spanning more than forty years. He was a patent examiner (1961), a patent agent at Esso Research and Engineering (1962-1965), a patent trial attorney in the Justice Department (1965-1968) and a member of the firm of Amster, Rothstein & Engelberg of New York City (1969-1985). In 1994, he made the commitment to create and support the Center on Innovation Law and Policy at NYU School of Law.
