Lateef Mtima

Lateef Mtima is a professor of law at the Howard University School of Law, and the founder and director of the Institute for Intellectual Property and Social Justice.

He is admitted to the New York and Pennsylvania bars and has practiced intellectual property, bankruptcy, and commercial law, including a decade in private practice with the former international law firm Coudert Brothers. He is a member of the Patent Public Advisory Council for the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO), the Copyright Alliance Advisory Board, the USPTO Patent Pro Bono Council, the US IP Alliance Board, the Penn State Dickinson Law Advisory Board, and the ALI Practical Lawyer Editorial Board, and is a non-resident C-IP2 Senior Scholar at George Mason School of Law’s Center for IP & Innovation Policy.

He previously served as a member of the advisory council for the U.S. Court of Federal Claims; president of the Giles S. Rich Inn of Court for the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit; an advisory board member of the BNA Patent, Trademark & Copyright Journal; and member of the founding editorial board for the ABA intellectual-property periodical Landslide. He was also a Distinguished Libra Visiting Scholar in Residence at the University of Maine School of Law.

After graduating with honors from Amherst College, Lateef received his J.D. from Harvard Law School, where he was the co-founder and later editor-in-chief of the Harvard BlackLetter Journal (today the Harvard Journal on Racial and Ethnic Justice).