Benjamin Boroughf Receives the 2013 Dolores K. Hanna Trademark Prize

Benjamin Boroughf, a second-year student at IIT Chicago-Kent College of Law, has been selected to receive the 2013 Dolores K. Hanna Trademark Prize. The prize was established at the law school in 2006 by the law firm of K & L Gates LLP (formerly Bell, Boyd & Lloyd LLC) to honor Dolores K. Hanna, a 1952 IIT Chicago-Kent graduate who served as the firm's special trademark counsel. Hanna retired from active practice in June 2006.

The Dolores K. Hanna Trademark Prize is awarded at the end of the school year to an IIT Chicago-Kent student based on outstanding performance in an intellectual property course. Recipients are selected by faculty who teach in the law school's program in intellectual property law.

Awardee Benjamin Boroughf is the incoming submissions editor of the Chicago-Kent Journal of Intellectual Property and a 2013 Chicago Intellectual Property Colloquium fellow. Boroughf has completed clerkships at Saper Law Offices LLC, the Illinois Department of Financial and Professional Regulation, and the Illinois Attorney Registration and Disciplinary Commission. He has also served as a legal volunteer at the Cook County Circuit Court's Self-Help Web Center and as a legal assistant in the Law Offices of Marshall D. Cohen in Columbus, Ohio.

Boroughf completed his undergraduate education at Western Michigan University, where he majored in English. He earned a graduate degree in Japanese linguistics at the Ohio State University.

Dolores Hanna practiced intellectual property law with distinction for more than 50 years. Prior to joining Bell, Boyd & Lloyd in 2000, Hanna practiced at the law firm of Hill & Simpson and also served as trademark counsel for Kraft Inc. From 1985 to 1987, she chaired the federal Trademark Review Commission, and recommended changes that were enacted into the Trademark Law Revision Act of 1988, the first comprehensive update of trademark law since passage of the Lanham Act in 1946. Active in local, county and state organizations, Hanna has served as president of the Intellectual Property Law Association of Chicago, the Women's Bar Association of Illinois, the Women's Bar Foundation, and the Cook County Court Watchers. She is also a past president of the International Trademark Association.

Founded in 1888, IIT Chicago-Kent College of Law is celebrating "125 years of distinctive legal education." IIT Chicago-Kent is the law school of Illinois Institute of Technology, a private, Ph.D.-granting institution with programs in engineering, psychology, architecture, business, design and law.

IIT Chicago-Kent currently offers a J.D. certificate program in intellectual property law and in 2002 became the first American law school to offer a one-year LL.M. degree in international intellectual property law. The most recent U.S. News & World Report ranked IIT Chicago-Kent's intellectual property program eleventh in the nation.