Rate My Professor Greg Vetter

Greg Vetter serves as Associate Dean for Academic Affairs and HIPLA College Professor of Law at the University of Houston Law Center, where he has been a faculty member since 2002. He earned a B.S. in Electrical Engineering from Missouri University of Science and Technology in 1987, an M.S. in Computer Science from the University of Missouri-Kansas City in 1991, an M.B.A. from Rockhurst University in 1994, and a J.D. magna cum laude from Northwestern University School of Law in 1999. Before entering law school, he worked for nine years full-time as a manager in the software industry, specializing in enterprise software design, management, and marketing. After law school, he practiced as an associate at Kilpatrick Stockton LLP and clerked for Judge Arthur J. Gajarsa on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit until 2002. At the University of Houston Law Center, he has held progressive faculty ranks, including Law Foundation Professor and full Professor, and has served as Co-Director of the Institute for Intellectual Property and Information Law, organizing nearly three dozen conferences and events. He has also taught as a visiting professor at the University of Texas School of Law, the University of Washington School of Law, and Texas A&M University School of Law. Since June 2017, as Associate Dean, he oversees academic program integrity, curriculum, scheduling, faculty development, accreditation, assessment, advising, and interdisciplinary programs.

Professor Vetter is a leading expert on intellectual property law as applied to software, with particular emphasis on free and open source software licensing at the intersection of software business practices, patent law, copyright law, and licensing law. His scholarship comprises over two dozen articles and significant publications, including invitations to contribute to casebooks such as Licensing of Intellectual Property and Other Information Assets (third edition) and Intellectual Property Law. Key works include "Are Prior User Rights Good for Software?" in the Texas Intellectual Property Law Journal (2015), "Patent Law’s Unpredictability Doctrine and the Software Arts" in the Missouri Law Review (2011), and "Patenting Cryptographic Technology" in the Chicago-Kent Law Review (2010). He has delivered nearly ninety presentations and provided service as chair of several Law Center committees, section chair for the Association of American Law Schools, and contributor to University of Houston central campus initiatives. His academic honors include summa cum laude distinctions across his degrees and competitive research grants from the University of Houston system.