Professor and Director Emeritus John F. Witherspoon Establishes ‘The Witherspoon Scholars Program’

Faculty Emeritus John F. Witherspoon has made a generous pledge to donate $300,000 to start ‘The John F. Witherspoon Scholars Program’. The Program will provide funding for the next 15 years, primarily to students with financial need and those interested in intellectual property, including patent law. The first Witherspoon Scholars will be announced in fall 2023.

“I am grateful to our friend, Professor and Director Emeritus John Witherspoon for his many contributions to our school: both his outstanding teaching and his decades of generous giving,” stated Scalia Law Dean Ken Randall. “Mr. Witherspoon started as the Director of our Intellectual Property law track in 1992—our oldest and largest specialty track. He taught and provided career advice to hundreds of our patent students. Even after his retirement in 2003, he continued to provide much-valued counsel to our students. His establishment of the Witherspoon Scholars Program will provide the opportunity of a legal education to fifteen years of law students. Professor Witherspoon is an acclaimed patent attorney, and his association with Scalia Law School honors our institution.”

John Witherspoon’s career in government, academia, and private practice spans more than fifty years. Following law school, he became a law clerk to Judge Giles Sutherland Rich, who was widely regarded as the foremost authority on United States patent law in the last half of the twentieth century. John then practiced patent law with a firm in Washington. In 1971, he was appointed by the President to be an Examiner-in-Chief and to serve on the then Board of Appeals in the Patent Office. He returned to private practice in 1978 and continued practicing law until he retired in 2016. In 1992, John was invited to join the adjunct faculty at George Mason University School of Law (now Antonin Scalia Law School) as Distinguished Professor of Intellectual Property Law and to head the School’s intellectual property law program, the oldest and largest of the school’s specialty track programs. He taught courses in patent law and was dedicated to promoting a healthy academic discussion, grounded in rigorous scholarship, and a well-informed public policy debate about the importance of intellectual property. Upon retiring from teaching in 2003, John was accorded the title: “Professor and Director Emeritus, Intellectual Property Program, George Mason University School of Law.” He has provided expert testimony in over 150 patent infringement cases in the United States and Puerto Rico.

With $746,250 in lifetime giving to C-IP2 and the law school’s General Scholarship Fund, this proposed gift would put his lifetime giving at over $1 million and leave a legacy of supporting students in his name that would bind future law school administrations 15 years into the future.

“A school is only as good as its students,” said Professor Witherspoon. “I have found the students to be hard working, pleasant and enjoyable to work with, and wish to invest in their continued success.”