Neel U. Sukhatme

Croak Research Fellow

Neel U. Sukhatme is a Croak Research Fellow, under the renamed Croak Visiting Scholars Program (formerly known as an Edison Research Fellow under the Edison Visiting Scholars Program) at the United States Patent and Trademark Office. His research topics are patent post-grant processes and economics.

Professor Sukhatme is a Professor of Law at Georgetown University Law Center, and an Andrew Carnegie Fellow for 2021–23. His current research focuses on empirical patent law and law and economics. He teaches Property, Patent Law, Corporate Finance, Advanced Corporate Finance: Quantitative Analysis and Valuation, and Empirical Analysis for Lawyers and Policymakers, and he co-directs the Georgetown Law and Economics Workshop series.

Professor Sukhatme is licensed to practice law in Illinois (inactive) and California, and has previously worked at Latham & Watkins LLP. He also co-founded Spindrop, a music technology and internet radio startup with a novel approach for automatically mixing songs. In 2020, he co-founded Free Our Vote, a non-partisan, non-profit organization of data scientists, economists, and legal researchers that seeks to restore voting rights for people with past felony convictions.

Professor Sukhatme has published or has forthcoming articles in the Harvard Law Review, Duke Law Journal, Cornell Law Review, Vanderbilt Law Review, Minnesota Law Review, American Law and Economics Review, International Review of Law and Economics, William & Mary Law Review, Washington and Lee Law Review, Houston Law Review, Harvard International Law Journal, The Regulatory Review, and Competition Policy International.

Professor Sukhatme received his doctorate in economics from Princeton University (he was awarded the 2014 Towbes Prize for Outstanding Teaching); a Juris Doctor, cum laude, from Harvard Law School (served as Notes Editor of the Harvard Law Review); and a bachelor’s degree in computer engineering (highest honors) with a minor in mathematics from the University of Illinois. After law school, he clerked for the Hon. Vaughn R. Walker on the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California and the Hon. Ann Claire Williams on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit.