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Margo A. Bagley

Asa Griggs Candler Professor of Law and Associate Dean for Research
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Areas of Expertise

Biotechnology, Intellectual Property, Patent Law

Courses

Patent Law

Biography

Margo A. Bagley is Asa Griggs Candler Professor of Law at Emory University School of Law. She rejoined the Emory faculty in 2016 after a decade at the University of Virginia, School of Law, where she was most recently the Hardy Cross Dillard Professor of Law.

Bagley received her JD in 1996 from Emory, where she was a Robert W. Woodruff Fellow, an editor of the Emory Law Journal, and elected to Order of the Coif. She is a member of the Georgia bar and is licensed to practice before the US Patent and Trademark Office. Bagley worked as an associate with Smith, Gambrell & Russell, LLP and Finnegan, Henderson, Farabow, Garrett & Dunner, LLP before becoming an assistant professor of law at Emory University in 1999 and associate professor in 2002. She was a visiting professor of law at Washington & Lee University School of Law in fall 2001 and at the University of Virginia School of Law in fall 2005, after which she joined the University of Virginia faculty in 2006. She is a faculty lecturer with the Munich Intellectual Property Law Center at the Max Planck Institute in Germany, and also has taught International Patent Law and related courses in China, Cuba, Israel, and Singapore.

Bagley served on both the National Academies Committee on Advancing Commercialization from the Federal Laboratories and the National Academies Committee on University Management of Intellectual Property: Lessons from a Generation of Experience, Research, and Dialogue. She is also an expert technical advisor to the African Union in several World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO) matters and was the Friend of the Chair in the WIPO Intergovernmental Committee on Intellectual Property and Genetic Resources, Traditional Knowledge and Folklore, from 2016-2022. Bagley has served as a consultant to the UN Food and Agriculture Organization Secretariat for the International Treaty on Plant Genetic Resources for Food and Agriculture, and as a US Department of Commerce CLDP advisor. In addition, she served as a member of the Convention on Biological Diversity’s (CBD) Ad Hoc Technical Expert Group on Digital Sequence Information on Genetic Resources for the CBD and Nagoya Protocol. Her scholarship focuses on comparative issues relating to patents and biotechnology, pharmaceuticals and access to medicines, technology transfer, and IP and social justice.

Bagley has published numerous articles and book chapters, as well as two books with co-authors: Bagley, Okediji and Erstling, International Patent Law & Policy (West Publishing 2013) and Patent Law in Global Perspective (Okediji and Bagley eds., Oxford University Press 2014). She also authored a report on Digital DNA: Synthetic Biology, Intellectual Property Treaties, and the Nagoya Protocol, commissioned by the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars. A chemical engineer with a BS ChE degree from the University of Wisconsin-Madison, Bagley worked in industry (with the Procter & Gamble Company and the Coca Cola Company) for several years before attending law school, and is a co-inventor on a patent for reduced fat peanut butter. Bagley also completed research internships at Oak Ridge National Laboratory, Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, AT&T Bell Laboratories, and the NASA Marshall Space Flight Center. Her courses include US and International & Comparative Patent Law, Trademark Law, and Intellectual Property.