AUSTIN, Texas - Two University of Texas School of Law students won the national championship in a prestigious intellectual property moot court competition last week in Washington, D.C.
Cyrus Bharucha, '02, and Owais Siddiqui, '02, defeated a team from the University of California at Berkeley to capture the national title at the twenty-ninth annual Giles Sutherland Rich Memorial Moot Court Competition, which was held April 10-12. The competition is sponsored by the American Intellectual Property Law Association. First-place winners receive $2,000. The two winning students each receive a $1,000 check as prize money.
Bharucha and Siddiqui initially defeated teams from Chicago-Kent College of Law and the University of San Diego School of Law. In the final round, they argued before three judges from the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit, the appeals court that decides U.S. patent-law cases. After an hour of interrogation, the panel announced that Bharucha and Siddiqui were the champions over their opponents from Berkeley's Boalt Hall.
"I was delighted just to be in the finals, arguing before that panel of U.S. Circuit judges," Bharucha said. "It was fabulous when they announced that we'd won. I think it's another indicator of the caliber of our law school's IP program."
Only eight teams qualified for the national competition from more than 40 teams around the country. UT Law was the only school with two teams competing at the national level. Christopher Ryan, '02, and Sharmila Chatterjee, '03, made it to the quarter-final round in Washington, but lost to Berkeley. The other six teams were from Berkeley, the Benjamin N. Cardozo School of Law in New York, Suffolk University, Chicago-Kent College of Law, Marquette University and the University of San Diego.
In preparation, the UT Law teams spent months practicing with volunteer coaches Amber Hatfield, '90, and Jim Calkins, both Austin attorneys. Based on the students' sweep of the Southern Regional Competition in Houston in March, UT Law was invited to send all four team members to the competition's national tournament. At the regional tournament, Ryan and Chatterjee won the title, along with awards for Best Appellee Brief and Best Oral Advocates. Bharucha and Siddiqui placed second and received the award for Best Appellant Brief at that tournament.