GENEVA -- American lawyer James Pooley was chosen Tuesday to lead the World Intellectual Property Agency's patent division.

A key decision-making panel at the U.N. agency approved Pooley for the post of deputy director-general for patents.

The position is one of the most important within the agency, which generates most of its income from patent registration fees and is the only U.N. body to run a profit.

Pooley is an adjunct law professor at the University of California, Berkeley, and an intellectual-property lawyer at Morrison and Foerster in Palo Alto.

The panel also approved candidates from Nigeria, China, Germany, Barbados, Sri Lanka and Japan for senior posts.