Professor Thomas joined the Law Center faculty in 2002. He has served as a Visiting Scholar at the Congressional Research Service and was named the inaugural Thomas Alva Edison Visiting Scholar at the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office. He currently serves as Academic Advisor to the National Board of Trial Advocacy and as a member of the Patent Challenge Committee of the Patent Quality Initiative. Professor Thomas formerly served as law clerk to Chief Judge Helen W. Nies of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit; visiting fellow at the Max Planck Institute for Foreign and Comparative Patent, Copyright and Unfair Competition Law in Munich, Germany; and research scholar at the Institute of Intellectual Property in Tokyo, Japan. Professor Thomas has authored or co-authored numerous articles and eight books on the subject of intellectual property law.

Scholarship

Forthcoming Works - Journal Articles & Working Papers

John R. Thomas, Revisiting Patent Linkage, 34 Tex. Intell. Prop. L.J. (forthcoming 2025). [SSRN]
John R. Thomas, Patent Infringement in Time (working paper). [Gtown Law] [SSRN]

Books

John R. Thomas & Christopher Holman, Thomas and Holman on Pharmaceutical Patent Law (Arlington, Va.: Bloomberg BNA Online 5th ed. 2024). [BOOK]
Brian Dean Abramson with James M. Beck, Sonali Gunawardhana, Denise M. Hill, Dorit Rubinstein Reiss, Ana Santos Rutschman, Peter O. Safir & John R. Thomas, Vaccine, Vaccination, and Immunization Law (Wash., D.C.: American Health Law Association 3d ed. 2025). [BOOK]

Contributions to Law Reviews and Other Scholarly Journals

John R. Thomas, The Scope of the Prior Art, 93 Geo. Wash. L. Rev. 54-104 (2025). [WWW] [Gtown Law] [W] [SSRN]