Bob is a partner in Bramson & Pressman, a law firm that provides legal services for licensing and selling patents and technologies. He has been:
• CEO of InterDigital Patents Corporation, a patent licensing company;
• Vice President and General Patent and Technology Counsel for Unisys Corporation;
• Partner and Head, Computer and Technology Law Group, Schnader, Harrison, Segal & Lewis; and
• Licensing Counsel for Abbott Laboratories.
Bob has taught Patent Law, Computer Law, Licensing Law and Transactions and International Business Transactions at Temple University School of Law, Rutgers Law School - Camden, Georgetown Law Center and Villanova University School of Law for over twenty-five years.

Partner, Bramson & Pressman

Bruce Berman is chairman and founder of the Center for Intellectual Property Understanding, a non-profit that facilitates IP awareness and education. He is managing director of Brody Berman Associates, a management consulting and communications firm that works with innovative businesses to improve understanding and enhance return. Since 1988, Brody Berman has supported 200+ intellectual property-rich businesses, portfolios and strategies, as well as many law firms and their clients. Bruce is responsible for five books about the business of IP rights, including From Ideas to Assets, and has written The Intangible Investor column for IAM magazine since 2003. IPCloseUp, an update on trends that he publishes, is read in more than 50 countries.

Chairman, Center for Intellectual Property Understanding

Ashly Boesche is a Partner at Pattishall McAuliffe. While she handles all facets of non-patent intellectual property law, she has a strong background litigating in federal courts across the country and before the Trademark Trial and Appeal Board. She has handled cases involving trademark and trade dress infringement, false advertising, copyright infringement and misappropriation of trade secrets. Ashly has extensive experience with discovery of electronically stored information and has been recognized by Illinois Super Lawyers as a "Top Rated E-Discovery Lawyer." She is an adjunct professor at Chicago-Kent College of Law and also coaches its Saul Lefkowitz moot court teams.

Partner, Pattishall McAuliffe

Awareness Team leader at the European Observatory on infringements of IPR, Claire joined the EUIPO in 2013 to coordinate the design and implementation of awareness campaigns on the value of IP and damages of infringements. She was previously head of the communication team in a public private technology partnership (2009-2013) and member of a communication unit in the European Commission (2006-2009). She opened the Brussels Office of Publicis Consultants in 1997 and run it till 2006.

European Union Intellectual Property Office

James Conley is clinical professor of technology at Northwestern University. He serves on the faculty of both the Kellogg School of Management and the McCormick School of Engineering at Northwestern University. He is a faculty contributor in the Kellogg Center for Research in Technology & Innovation and serves as a Faculty Fellow at the Segal Design Institute (NU IDEA). At present, he is also serving as a Visiting Professor in the chair of technology and innovation management at the WHU in Germany. Beyond academia, he is an appointed member of the United States Department of Commerce Trademark Public Advisory Committee of the Patent and Trademark Office. Professor Conley’s research investigates the strategic use of intangible assets and intellectual properties to build and sustain competitive advantage. Research sponsors include the National Science Foundation, NASA, FAA, NIST, the Department of Defense, Motorola, Daimler-Chrysler, the OECD and others.

Professor, Northwestern University

Mr. Q. Todd Dickinson is Senior Partner at Polsinelli, LLC, and served as Under Secretary of Commerce for Intellectual Property and Director United States Patent and Trademark Office, as well as Vice President and Chief IP Counsel for General Electric and Executive Director of American Intellectual Property Law Association. Mr. Dickinson serves as a Director at SightSound Technologies Inc.

Senior Partner, Polsinelli, LLC; Former Director of USPTO; Former CIPO of GE; Former Executive Director of AIPLA

Tony Dutra is a Legal Editor who writes about all IP topics for Bloomberg Law’s Patent, Trademark & Copyright Journal, with a focus on patent law. Dutra joined Bloomberg Law in 2008 after a 25-year career in the software and computer networking industry.  He is listed as an inventor on seven U.S. patents related to Internet telephony. He received a J.D. from George Washington University Law School, an M.S. in Management from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, and a bachelor's degree from Harvard University. He is a member of the District of Columbia bar.

Legal Editor, Bloomberg Law

Scott Frank is responsible for the identification, development, protection, management, marketing, licensing and sale of all intellectual property for AT&T, the owner of one of the world’s most valuable intellectual property portfolios. His Intellectual Property organization has grown the patent portfolio significantly to over 10,000 patents worldwide and has successfully licensed and sold patents, trademarks and copyrighted technology to companies all over the world to add significant dollars to AT&T’s bottom line.

President & CEO, AT&T Intellectual Property

Gary Grube is a founder and CEO of the Caerus Institute, connecting emerging technologies to future market opportunities, creating inventions and patents around those spaces, helping technology companies bring their innovative visions to life by forming intellectual property strategies, and managing the tactical execution of the strategy. Gary is a prolific inventor with over 300 issued U.S. patents. Prior to the Caerus Institute, Gary served in many research and development roles at Motorola and was Motorola's first named Motorola Senior Fellow receiving an MBA from Northwestern University, an MSEE from IIT, and a BSEE from the University of Illinois.

Founder & CEO, Caerus Institute

Stephen Haber is the A.A. and Jeanne Welch Milligan Professor in the School of Humanities and Sciences and the Peter and Helen Bing Senior Fellow of the Hoover Institution at Stanford University. He is also Professor of Political Science, of History, and (by courtesy) of Economics, as well as a Senior Fellow of the Stanford Institute for Economic Policy Research. Haber directs the Hoover Institution Working Group on Intellectual Property, Innovation, and Prosperity (Hoover IP2).

Professor, Stanford University; Director of Hoover Institution Working Group - IP^2

Bowman Heiden is Deputy Director of Center for Intellectual Property at Chalmers University of Technology, University of Gothenburg, and Norwegian University of Science and Technology (NTNU). He is also a Lecturer and Director of the Sahlgrenska School of Innovation and Entrepreneurship at University of Gothenburg. His background is in engineering and technology management and economics with a current focus on the intersection of law, economics, and innovation.

Deputy Director, Center for Intellectual Property

Seasoned IP Executive with over 27 years experience managing all aspects of Intellectual Property for some of the world's largest companies. Most recently he served in the Netherlands as Chief IP Officer of Royal Philips and CEO of Philips Intellectual Property and Standards. Prior to that, he was co-founder of Unified Patents Inc., and before that he was Vice President of Licensing for InterDigital, has served as Vice President of IP and Licensing for Verizon, the founding CEO of Allied Security Trust, and also served as Vice President of IP and Licensing for IBM and Director of Licensing for Westinghouse. Brian has degrees from the University of Pittsburgh and Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute.

Former CIPO, Royal Philips

David J. Kappos is a partner at Cravath, Swaine & Moore. He is a leader in the field of intellectual property, including IP management and strategy. From 2009 to 2013, Mr. Kappos served as Under Secretary of Commerce and Director of the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO). In that role, he was instrumental in achieving the greatest legislative reform of the U.S. patent system in generations through passage and implementation of the 2011 Leahy-Smith America Invents Act. Prior to leading the USPTO, Mr. Kappos held several executive posts in the legal department of IBM, the world’s largest patent holder, including Vice President and Assistant General Counsel for Intellectual Property. Mr. Kappos has received numerous accolades for his contributions to the field of IP, including being named one of the Top 25 Icons of IP by Law360, one of the 50 Most Influential People in IP by Managing IP. Mr. Kappos serves on the Boards of Directors of the Partnership for Public Service, the Center for Global Enterprise and the Intellectual Property Owners Education Foundation. He is also an adjunct professor at Columbia Law School, where he teaches copyright litigation. Mr. Kappos received a B.S. summa cum laude in Electrical and Computer Engineering from the University of California, Davis in 1983 and a J.D. from the University of California, Berkeley in 1990.

Partner, Cravath, Swaine, & Moore

Mr. Keller co-founded Gerchen Keller Capital and as Managing Director helped steer its growth to $1.3 billion in assets under management prior to its acquisition by Burford. Before co-founding Gerchen Keller, Mr. Keller was a partner at Bartlit Beck Herman Palenchar & Scott LLP, The American Lawyer’s litigation boutique of the year, where he handled various trial and appellate matters involving multi-billion-dollar securities and patent cases, contractual disputes and mass-tort class actions. Mr. Keller has also worked as an analyst at Alyeska Investment Group, a Chicago-based market neutral hedge fund, where he focused on investments in companies facing litigation and other complicated regulatory matters. Before practicing, Mr. Keller was a law clerk for Judge Richard Posner at the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit and Justice Anthony M. Kennedy at the Supreme Court of the United States. He graduated magna cum laude from Harvard College and received an MBA from the University of Chicago Booth School of Business and a JD from the University of Chicago Law School, where he graduated first in his class.

Managing Director, Burford Capital

Patrick Kilbride is vice president of international intellectual property for the Global Intellectual Property Center (GIPC) at the U.S. Chamber of Commerce. There, he oversees the center’s multilateral and international programs promoting the protection and enforcement of intellectual property (IP) rights, managing a team of country and regional experts. Previously, Kilbride was Executive Director, Americas Strategic Policy Initiatives, and Executive Vice President, Association of American Chambers of Commerce in Latin America (AACCLA), within the Chamber’s International Division.

Vice President, International IP for the Global IP Center at the U.S. Chamber of Commerce

As the Director of the Rocky Mountain Regional United States Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO), since January 2016, Mollybeth (Molly) Kocialski carries out the strategic direction of the Under Secretary of Commerce for Intellectual Property and Director of the USPTO, and is responsible for leading the Rocky Mountain regional office. Focusing on the nine states within this region and actively engaging with the community, Ms. Kocialski ensures the USPTO’s initiatives and programs are tailored to the region’s unique ecosystem of industries and stakeholders.

Director of the Rocky Mountain Regional USPTO

Professor Edward Lee joined IIT Chicago-Kent's faculty in 2010 as a professor of law and director of the Program in Intellectual Property Law. Professor Lee's research focuses on the ways in which the Internet, technological development, and globalization challenge existing legal paradigms. In addition to numerous articles, he co-authored two casebooks—one with Daniel Chow titled International Intellectual Property: Problems, Cases, and Materials (2d ed. 2012) and the other with Mark McKenna & David Schwartz, titled The Law of Design: Problems, Cases, and Materials (2017). As Director of the IP Program at Chicago Kent, he founded the annual Supreme Court IP Review, The Power of PTAB conference, and BookIT talk series, and co-founded the new Center for Design, Law & Technology (cΔ).

Chicago-Kent College of Law

David Lowery is the singer/songwriter for the rock bands Cracker and Camper Van Beethoven. He teaches in the Music Business Certificate Program at Terry College of Business, University of Georgia. He is well-known blogger and advocate for the intellectual property rights of musicians and songwriters. 

Leader, Rock Band Cracker; Writer and Asset Editor, The Trichordist; Lecturer, Terry College of Business University of Georgia

Judge Michel served for more than 22 years on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit, retiring in 2010. He judged several thousand appeals and authored more than 800 opinions, one third concerning intellectual property law. IAM magazine inducted him into the IP Hall of Fame, and he has been designated one of the 50 most influential leaders in intellectual property law in the world.  His contributions were also recognized by lifetime achievement and similar awards by the American Intellectual Property Law Association (AIPLA); Intellectual Property Owners Education Foundation (IPO); and the American Bar Association's Intellectual Property Section.

Judge Michel has written numerous articles on patent law and advocacy, taught related courses and master classes at George Washington University, the University of Akron, and John Marshall law schools, serving as well on their IP advisory boards and on counterpart boards at the universities of California (Berkley), Washington, and Maryland.  He co-authored a casebook, Patent Litigation and Strategy (West, 1999) and an August 2010 editorial in the New York Times on strengthening the patent system to promote prosperity and create new jobs.

Hon. Paul Michel (Chief Judge, CAFC, ret)

Ada Nielsen is Managing Director of The PeregrineMaven Group.

​

• Director of Intellectual Asset Strategy and Management in E&P Technology at BP America was focused on the life cycle of technical development - including successful commercialization - and sets up for working with start-ups and companies that want to grow their top and bottom lines.  

• Upstream Technology, my work packaging & monetizing all non-strategic technology developments in Chemicals after the BP-Amoco merger, & roles/ assignments detailed below.

• Elected 2010 President of the Licensing Executives Society (USA and Canada), Inc.

• Named by IAM Magazine as one of “300 Top IAM Strategists.”

• Named a Distinguished Licensing Distinguished Fellows in Chemicals, Energy, Environment & Materials by the Licensing Executives Society International

• Board Member of ACG Chicago (Association for Corporate Growth)

Past-President, Licensing Executives Society; Former Director, IAM Strategy

From 2004 through 2016, Parloff was Fortune’s main legal correspondent. Since then he has contributed to the New York Times, NewYorker.com, Yahoo, and New York. Before Fortune, he was on staff at The American Lawyer, and free-lanced for the Times, Wall Street Journal, and Legal Affairs. In 1996 he published a nonfiction book, Triple Jeopardy (Little Brown). His honors include a National Magazine Award, three Best in Business citations, and four New York Press Club awards. An attorney, Parloff clerked for a federal judge and practiced criminal law in Manhattan. He holds a B.A. from Harvard and J.D. from Yale.

Contributor, Yahoo Finance & Ex-Fortune

Aseet Patel concentrates on patent prosecution and litigation matters primarily in the electrical, computer, and business method arts. He also provides opinion counseling services to clients, including various types of clearance opinions on patents. Mr. Patel relies on his experience as a former Patent Examiner at the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office when representing clients in all phases of the prosecution of patent applications. While at the USPTO, he examined patent applications directed to high technology inventions such as memory devices, RAMs/ROMs, flash memories, caching algorithms, memory partitioning techniques, memory addressing techniques, hard drives, and RAID systems.

Partner, Banner & Witcoff

Marshall Phelps is Vice-Chairman of the Center for Intellectual Property Understanding, a non-profit dedicated to increasing IP awareness and improving attitudes. Phelps is a seminal figure in IP history, having established IP as a business unit at IBM in the 1980s, and helping to generate some $2 billion in annual patent and IP revenues. Recruited in 2003 by Bill Gates to build Microsoft’s IP department, he took the company from a handful of licenses to over 600 when he left in 2010 and helped to build one of the most productive patent portfolios in technology. Phelps, who co-founded Intellectual Ventures, was elected in 2006 to the initial class of the IP Hall of Fame. Named one of the “World’s Top 300 Intellectual Property Strategists” by IAM Magazine, Mr. Phelps also writes a regular monthly column for Forbes on the challenges business leaders face in developing and implementing innovation-driven growth strategies.

Vice-Chairman, Center for Intellectual Property Understanding

Professor Piatt was director of the IIT Downtown Campus Information Center until 2000, where she pioneered the use of imaging and other electronic technology. She has been a member of the ABA Litigation Section Special Publications Committee and was the technical program chair for the 1994 ASIS annual meeting. She currently advises the AIIM Committee on evidentiary and intellectual property issues related to legal documents in electronic formats. Professor Piatt has written and lectured extensively on topics concerning automated legal research, intellectual property, legal issues in information science and legal issues relating to artificial intelligence. She has developed a continuing education workshop for information professionals working with copyright issues in an electronic environment and on law and the Internet.

Deputy Director of the Program in Intellectual Property Law

John Pletz is a senior reporter and blogger covering technology and venture capital, with a focus on Chicago’s startup scene. John joined Crain’s in 2007 from the Indianapolis Star, where he was assistant business editor. Previously, he edited and reported on tech companies at the Austin American-Statesman in Austin, Texas. In the early 1990s, he was a reporter with the Post-Tribune in Gary, and the Herald-News in Joliet. John has a bachelor’s degree in journalism from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign.

Senior Reporter, Crain’s Chicago Business

James Pooley represents clients in patent, trade secret, and technology-related commercial litigation. His treatise Trade Secrets has been a standard for twenty years. His most recent business book is Secrets: Managing Information Assets in the Age of Cyberespionage. The U.S. Senate relied on him for expert testimony and advice regarding the 2016 Defend Trade Secrets Act. He is a former Deputy Director General of the World Intellectual Property Organization and President of the American Intellectual Property Law Association. He serves as Chairman of the National Inventors Hall of Fame Selection Board, and he teaches trade secret law at UC Berkeley Law School.

James Pooley PLC; Former Deputy Director General of WIPO

Gene Quinn is a patent attorney and a leading commentator on patent law and innovation policy. He is the Founder and Editor of IPWatchdog.com, which has been recognized multiple times by the American Bar Association as the top IP blog, and in 2014 was inducted into the ABA Blawg Hall of Fame. In 2017 he was also recognized as one of the World’s Leading IP Strategists by IAM. Regarded as an expert on software patentability and patent procedure, Mr. Quinn’s particular specialty is in the area of strategic patent consultancy, portfolio building and patent prosecution strategies.

IPWatchdog

Randall R. Rader was appointed to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit by President George H. W. Bush in 1990. Mr. Rader has won acclaim for leading dozens of government and educational delegations to every continent (except Antarctica), teaching rule of law and intellectual property law principles.
He has received many awards, including the Sedona Lifetime Achievement Award for Intellectual Property Law, 2009; Distinguished Teaching Awards from The George Washington University Law School, 2003 and 2008 (by election of the students); the Jefferson Medal from the New Jersey Intellectual Property Law Association, 2003; and the Distinguished Service Award from the Berkeley Center for Law and Technology. 

Before appointment to the Court of Federal Claims, Mr. Rader served as Minority and Majority Chief Counsel to Subcommittees of the U.S. Senate Committee on the Judiciary. From 1975 to 1980, he served as Counsel in the House of Representatives for representatives serving on the Interior, Appropriations, and Ways and Means Committees.

Hon. Randall Rader (Chief Judge, CAFC, ret)

Mr. Robinson previously served as Director of Patents for Qualcomm in Asia, where he managed a broad range of IP issues ranging from patent drafting, prosecution, licensing, and litigation, to regulatory, policy, and antitrust matters.  He also managed open source issues for Qualcomm Atheros, and created, implemented, and enforced open source protocols.  Before Qualcomm, Erick managed patent and open source matters for Red Hat. He is a trusted authority on patent and antitrust law in China, and has been selected as one of the Leading 300 IP Strategists Worldwide by IAM for the past two years.  The author of the influential ChinaPatentBlog.com as well as numerous articles on Chinese patent litigation, Mr. Robinson is frequently quoted in the Wall Street Journal, Financial Times, Intellectual Asset Management, and other publications on Chinese patent and antitrust issues.

Director of Patent Litigation, Beijing East IP

J Bruce Schelkopf is the group senior vice president and chief IP officer (CIPO) of ABB Ltd, a technology leader that works closely with utility, industry, transportation and infrastructure customers to write the future of industrial digitalization and realize value. Bruce is responsible for globally leading, managing and enforcing all IP business and strategy for ABB. Bruce has received numerous awards, including having been named as one of the 100 World’s Most Powerful CIPOs, one of the IAM 300 World’s Top IP Strategists (since 2015), top Global TM Counsel (WTR 300), and Global Fellow with the Federal Circuit Bar Association.

Chief Officer, ABB Group

Russell Slifer served President Obama as the Deputy Under Secretary of Commerce for Intellectual Property and Deputy Director of the United States Patent and Trademark Office and as the first Director of the Rocky Mountain United States Patent and Trademark Office. Russ was a long-time member of the board of directors of Intellectual Property Owners Association and is a past-president of the Association of Corporate Patent Counsel. Prior to his government service, he was Chief Patent Counsel for Micron Technology where he developed and implemented patent and world-wide IP strategies. He is a Principal at Schwegman, Lundberg & Woessner, PA focusing on IPR practice, expert testimony and complex patent portfolio development in electrical, mechanical, software and integrated circuit related inventions.

Former Deputy Director of USPTO

David J. Teece is the Thomas W. Tusher Professor in Global Business at the University of California, Berkeley’s Haas School of Business. Dr, Teece is Director of the Tusher Center for the Management of Intellectual Capital and Berkeley’s Institute for Business Innovation. His areas of interest include corporate strategy, entrepreneurship, innovation, competition policy, and intellectual property. Dr. Teece has testified in many seminal IP cases, including Napster and Apple v. Samsung, and founded with other Berkeley faculty members the Law and Economics Consulting Group (LECG). Dr. Teece has authored over 30 books and 200 scholarly papers, and is one of the most recognized economics scholars, having been cited more than 120,000 times. He has received five honorary doctorates and has been recognized by Royal Honors. Journal of International Business editor, John Cantwell, noted that Dr. Teece is perhaps the only person in the world that could qualify today as both an eminent scholar and business leader.

Professor, UC Berkeley's Haas School of Business; Chairman, Berkeley Research Group

Joyce is the Director of Education and Outreach programs for the United States Patent and Trademark Office.  Under Joyce’s leadership the USPTO has launched several projects for educators and students such as the Science of Innovation series, a collaboration between the USPTO, the National Science Foundation, and NBC Learn; a national summer institute for teachers with a focus on intellectual property and the resources of the USPTO; intellectual property and STEM/STEAM/Entrepreneurship professional development workshops for K-12 educators, an Intellectual Property patch, and the first USPTO Inventor Trading Card series.  Prior to her current position Joyce served as the Director of Program Support and Intellectual Property for the National Inventors Hall of Fame.  From 1994 to 2002, she worked for the USPTO as a Trademark Examining Attorney and later as an Education Specialist in the Office of Public Affairs.  

Director, Office of Education and Outreach at USPTO