History

The generosity of Dr Herchel Smith's enabled Queen Mary College (as it was then known) to be the first University in England to establish a dedicated intellectual property law research unit with an endowed Chair in Intellectual Property Law. The first Herchel Smith Chair was taken up in 1981 by James C. Lahore. Further financial support was received from the patent profession through the CIPA Centennial Appeal in 1982 which enabled, inter alia, the creation of an archive library to house a specialist intellectual property collection, with an ambition to acquire ‘every text in English on intellectual property law’. Along with CIPA, Dr Herchel Smith was instrumental in the creation of the current Intellectual Property Archive at QMUL.

 

The establishment of the Herchel Smith Chair of Intellectual Property, together
with its related staff and research facilities, gave CCLS its first operational law
unit, and the Centre subsequently evolved into its present-day appearance at 67–69
Lincoln’s Inn Fields. This undertaking would not have been as successful without the generous philanthropy of Herchel Smith, who, in addition to funding the initial endowment of a Chair, later provided further endowments for a research fellowship, a lectureship and scholarships, and, upon his death, a multi-million dollar bequest, which remains the largest donation made to the College to date.

 

Dr Herchel Smith's endowments to Queen Mary University of London continue to fund the Herchel Smith Chair in Intellectual Property, a number of Phd student scholarships and the annual Herchel Smith public lecture in intellectual property law.

For a more detailed history, see M.Langley, “The Weston Papers: Intellectual property law and the origins of the Centre for Commercial Law Studies at Queen Mary University of London” [2011] 1(1) Queen Mary Journal of Intellectual Property 2-20.