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Legal Ethics

Why fraud is on the rise and peer review is broken

Nicole Morris

Nicole N. Morris is a member of the faculty at Emory University School of Law. She is a professor of practice and director of the TI:GER® program.  TI:GER® (Technological Innovation: Generating Economic Results) is an innovative technology innovation program where Emory law students work with technology innovators to transform highly promising research or early stage technology into economically viable products. In collaboration with the Department of Energy's National Labs, students in the TI:GER Program work with scientists at the Labs to evaluate the commercial prospects for the technology. Students leverage market and industry analysis, along with legal research, to develop a robust licensing strategy.

Prior to joining the Emory faculty, Morris was the former managing patent counsel at The Coca-Cola Company in Atlanta, Georgia. While at The Coca-Cola Company, Nicole was responsible for the development and implementation of the company’s global patent strategy and providing day-to-day advice & counseling to business stakeholders, including freedom-to-operate and competitive assessments and counseling concerning IP related agreements.

Morris has over ten years of experience practicing patent law in large and mid-sized law firms and has represented clients in patent and trademark litigation matters, as well as patent prosecution matters. Morris also worked as an engineer for six years with 3M and Eli Lilly and has over twenty years of experience working with consumer products and technology commercialization.

Professor Morris is a frequent speaker on patent law topics including patent prosecution, patent litigation, IP licensing, and the role of corporate counsel in patent transactions. She is also a member of the American Intellectual Property Law Association, Atlanta IP Inn of Court, Atlanta Bar Association, Georgia Lawyers for the Arts (Board Member), and serves as Treasurer of the Minority In-House Counsel Association. In 2013, Morris was awarded the 2013 Rising Star Corporate Counsel Award from the Atlanta Business Chronicle and featured in the August 2013 issue of Corporate Counsel magazine.

Morris is licensed to practice before the United States Patent and Trademark Office and is admitted to practice in the states of Georgia, Minnesota, Massachusetts, and in the District of Columbia. 


Selected Publications

Professor Morris suggests the following further reading on ethical research and misconduct.

Peter Lee
Innovation in the Service of Society, 104 Boston University Law Review B.U.L. 695 (2024)

Alexander I. Platt
Unicorniphobia, 13 Harvard Business Law Review 115 (2023)

Elizabeth Pollman
Private Company Lies, 109 Georgetown Law Journal 353 (2020)

Tuija Takala & Matti Häyry
Research Ethics and Justice: The Case of Finland, 28 Cambridge Quarterly of Healthcare Ethics 551 (2019)

Maurice Stucke
Promoting an Ethical Organizational Culture, 19 Transactions: The Tennessee Journal of Business Law 307 (2017)

Patrick O’Leary
Policing Research Misconduct, 25 Albany Law Journal of Science & Technology 39 (2015)

Jennifer M. Pacella
Advocate or Adversary? When Attorneys Act as Whistleblowers, 28 Georgetown Journal of Legal Ethics 1027 (2015)