Sally M. Abel is Chair of the Trademark Group at Fenwick & West, LLP, a 200-attorney firm specializing in high technology matters headquartered in Palo Alto, California. She specializes in international trademark and trade name counseling, including the development and management of international trademark portfolios and trademark rights in cyberspace.
Ms. Abel has repeatedly won international, national, state and Silicon Valley accolades as a preeminent trademark lawyer, most recently selected by her peers for inclusion in the 2010 edition of The Best Lawyers in America in the area of intellectual property law. She was named one of the most highly regarded trademark practitioners in the world in Who’s Who Legal 2008, an honor reserved to 20 trademark lawyers, only eight of whom are from the United States.
Ms. Abel was a member of the Board of Directors of the International Trademark Association (INTA) from May 1998 to May 2000. She chaired INTA’s Internet Subcommittee for two years, from 1996 to 1998, developed and chaired INTA’s Enforcement Committee, and currently serves on INTA’s International Amicus Committee and the organization’s Panel of Neutrals. Ms. Abel was a pioneer in the international debate over trademark rights on the Internet, including serving as INTA’s representative on the 11-member International Ad Hoc Committee (IAHC), the international body organized by the Internet Society, to restructure the domain name system. At the invitation of the World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO), Ms. Abel also participated in WIPO’s First Meeting of Consultants on Trademarks and Internet Domain Names held in Geneva in February, 1997. Through WIPO and the National Arbitration Forum, she has served as a neutral panelist on numerous domain name disputes brought under ICANN’s UDRP system. She writes and lectures internationally on trademarks and the Internet and teaches international trademark law and practice at Berkeley Law. She is a member of the Board of Advisors to the Computer History Museum and of the Advisory Council to the J. Thomas McCarthy Institute for Intellectual Property and Technology Law.
Sally Abel is not teaching any Law courses in Fall 2024.