Welcoming Keynote Speech
Robert Merges, Asia IP & Competition Law Center, BCLT, UC Berkeley Law
Before joining the Berkeley Law faculty in 1995, Robert Merges was a faculty member at Boston University School of Law and served as a visiting professor at Harvard Law School. He has also been a Visiting Professor at Stanford Law School.
Merges has authored or coauthored five books, (1) Patent Law and Policy: Cases and Materials; (2) Intellectual Property in the New Technological Age; (3) Legal Protection for Computer Technology; (4) Trademarks, Unfair Competition and Business Torts; and (5) Justifying Intellectual Property. He has also edited six other books.
Panel I: AI’s Challenge to Inventorship
Nalini Mummalaneni, USPTO
Nalini Mummalaneni is a Senior Legal Advisor in the Office of Patent Legal Administration (OPLA) at the USPTO. In this position, she drafts rule packages, memoranda, and associated guidance on topics such as subject matter eligibility under 35 U.S.C. 101 and disclosure requirements under 35 U.S.C. 112. Nalini also coordinates the development and implementation of patent examination guidance related to Artificial Intelligence and other emerging technologies at the USPTO.
Nalini graduated from The George Washington University Law School, and she holds a Master’s in Computer Science from the University of Texas at Dallas and a BS in Electrical Engineering from Nagarjuna University, India.
Dr. Chris Mammen, Womble Bond Dickinson (United States)
For more than 25 years, Chris has guided Silicon Valley, national, and global tech and life sciences clients in high- stakes patent, other intellectual property, and technology litigation. He has led both large and small trial teams in courts throughout the United States, and has also served as lead counsel on appeals before the Ninth and Federal Circuits. His clients include companies in the software, artificial intelligence, telecommunications, microelectronics, medical devices, and life sciences sectors. Before joining Womble Bond Dickinson in 2019, Chris practiced in the Bay Area offices of several nationally-known law firms.
Chris de Mauny, Bird and Bird (United States)
Chris is a patent litigation specialist based in San Francisco. He advises clients from a range of industries including tech, life sciences and sustainable technologies. He is licensed to practise law in England & Wales and registered as a Foreign Legal Consultant with the State Bar of California.
He advises on all forms of intellectual property litigation, principally patent litigation. In 2018, Chris was identified as a ‘rising star’ for patent litigation by Managing Intellectual Property and again in 2019. In 2019, Chris was referred to as a ‘key lawyer’ within Bird & Bird’s London patent litigation team by Legal 500. In 2020, he was recognised as a ‘Rising Star’ for patents by Expert Guides, a peer-nominated international guide to lawyers, Legal 500 and MIP. Since becoming a partner in 2021, Chris has been ranked or recommended by IAM, MIP and Legal 500.
Yong woo Shin, Jipyong LLC (Korea)
Mr. Shin received a B.S. and a M.S. in computer engineering from Pohang University of Science & Technology and engaged in research and development in the ICT field. After passing the bar, he represented clients in consultations and litigation related to ICT and intellectual property. Before joining Jipyong, Mr. Shin worked for the executive and legislative branches, leading enactment of policies and laws.
Moderator:
Dr. Yuan HAO, Asia IP & Competition Law Center, BCLT, UC Berkeley Law
Dr. Yuan Hao is Co-Director and Senior Fellow of the Berkeley Asia IP and Competition Law Center (BAIC) and a Lecturer at UC Berkeley School of Law. Her research focuses on two intersecting themes: (1) IP’s role in facilitating human creativity in an AI-powered age, and (2) IP’s role in facilitating private ordering and innovation ecosystems under authoritarian governance.
Panel II: AI’s Challenges to Non-obviousness / Inventive-step and Disclosure
Dr. Yuan HAO, Asia IP & Competition Law Center, BCLT, UC Berkeley Law
Dr. Yuan Hao is Co-Director and Senior Fellow of the Berkeley Asia IP and Competition Law Center (BAIC) and a Lecturer at UC Berkeley School of Law. Her research focuses on two intersecting themes: (1) IP’s role in facilitating human creativity in an AI-powered age, and (2) IP’s role in facilitating private ordering and innovation ecosystems under authoritarian governance.
Peter Lee, UC Davis Law
Peter Lee teaches and writes in the field of innovation law and policy. His research focuses on patent law and other fields of intellectual property, technology transfer, artificial intelligence (AI), and science policy. His recent scholarly works explore the social context and implications of innovation and the structure of innovative and creative industries. Professor Lee’s scholarship has appeared in The Yale Law Journal, Stanford Law Review, California Law Review, Duke Law Journal, Michigan Law Review, and other leading journals. Professor Lee is an elected member of the American Law Institute, and he has received numerous awards for his scholarly work, including the UC Davis Chancellor’s Fellowship, the Samsung-Stanford Patent Prize, and inclusion in West/Thomson’s annual Intellectual Property Law Review. Professor Lee has held visiting or invited positions at the University of Oxford, Seoul National University, and Melbourne Law School, and he speaks widely on intellectual property matters in the United States and abroad. He is the founding director of the Center for Innovation, Law, and Society.
Lisa Ouellette, Stanford Law
Lisa Larrimore Ouellette is the Deane F. Johnson Professor of Law at Stanford Law School and a Senior Fellow at the Stanford Institute for Economic Policy Research. Her research focuses on intellectual property law and innovation policy. She leverages her training in physics to explore policy issues such as how scientific expertise might improve patent examination, the value of information disclosed in patents, patenting publicly funded research under the Bayh–Dole Act, equity in patent inventorship, and the integration of IP with other levers of innovation policy. She has applied these ideas to biomedical innovation challenges including the opioid epidemic, COVID-19, vaccines, and pharmaceutical prices. She has also written about doctrinal puzzles in patent and trademark law, the effect of AI on patent practice, and the potential for different standards of review to create “deference mistakes” in numerous areas of law.
Arti Rai, Duke Law
Arti Rai, Elvin R. Latty Professor of Law and Faculty Director, The Center for Innovation Policy at Duke Law, is an internationally recognized expert in intellectual property (IP) law, innovation policy, administrative law, and health law.
Rai’s extensive research on these subjects has been funded by NIH, NSF, Arnold Ventures, the Kauffman Foundation, the Greenwall Foundation, and the Woodrow Wilson Center. Her numerous publications have appeared in both peer-reviewed journals and law reviews. Peer-reviewed journals include Science, the New England Journal of Medicine, JAMA, the Journal of Legal Studies, Nature Biotechnology, and the Journal of Law and the Biosciences.
Moderator:
Robert Merges, Asia IP & Competition Law Center, BCLT, UC Berkeley Law
Before joining the Berkeley Law faculty in 1995, Robert Merges was a faculty member at Boston University School of Law and served as a visiting professor at Harvard Law School. He has also been a Visiting Professor at Stanford Law School.
Merges has authored or coauthored five books, (1) Patent Law and Policy: Cases and Materials; (2) Intellectual Property in the New Technological Age; (3) Legal Protection for Computer Technology; (4) Trademarks, Unfair Competition and Business Torts; and (5) Justifying Intellectual Property. He has also edited six other books.
Panel III: Style, Voice and NIL: Protecting Human Persona in the AI Age
Jyh-An Lee, Chinese University of Hong Kong
Jyh-An Lee is Professor and the founding Executive Director of the Centre for Legal Innovation and Digital Society (CLINDS) at the Chinese University of Hong Kong (CUHK) Faculty of Law. He oversees the New Ventures Legal Team, a clinical support group that collaborates with CUHK’s Pre-Incubation Centre to assist startup companies. Holding a JSD from Stanford Law School and an LLM from Harvard Law School, he has published on various facets of intellectual property and digital technology law. Since 2016, Professor Lee has also served as a panellist for the Asian Domain Name Dispute Resolution Centre. Professor Lee has been featured on ABC News, BBC News, Bloomberg News, Financial Times, Fortune, and South China Morning Post as an expert on intellectual property and internet law. His works have been cited by the US Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit, the UK High Court of Justice, the US Copyright Office, the US Patent and Trademark Office, the US International Trade Commission, and the WTO dispute-settlement panel.
Dr. Chien-Chih (Jesse) Lu, National Chengchi University (Taiwan)
Dr. Chien-Chih Lu is an Assistant Professor in the College of Communication at National Chengchi University (NCCU) in Taipei, Taiwan. His research focuses on entertainment law, intellectual property rights, internet governance, intermediary liability, media innovation, and digital entrepreneurship.
Robert Merges, Asia IP & Competition Law Center, BCLT, UC Berkeley Law
Before joining the Berkeley Law faculty in 1995, Robert Merges was a faculty member at Boston University School of Law and served as a visiting professor at Harvard Law School. He has also been a Visiting Professor at Stanford Law School.
Merges has authored or coauthored five books, (1) Patent Law and Policy: Cases and Materials; (2) Intellectual Property in the New Technological Age; (3) Legal Protection for Computer Technology; (4) Trademarks, Unfair Competition and Business Torts; and (5) Justifying Intellectual Property. He has also edited six other books.
Duane Valz, Valz Legal
For over 25 years, Duane has led the legal and IP functions at prominent Silicon Valley companies operating at a variety of scales and growth stages. He has been broadly recognized over the past 15 years as one of the world’s leading IP strategists. Duane brings this experience to Valz Legal, Inc., his legal practice providing entrepreneurs, investors and emerging growth companies with insight and execution at the intersection of law, business and technology. Valz Legal works with entrepreneurs and start-ups on matters of business and product strategy, including company formation, financings, investor connections, product development and positioning, IP strategy, corporate development, and compliance matters.
Valz Legal also works with more mature companies on complex technology transactions, IP strategy, and legal function building. To maximize client support as needed, Duane often engages with collaborators across many different fields. His network includes legal and intellectual property specialists, executives and business managers from leading technology companies; angel, venture capital and institutional investors; software, machine learning and data engineers; product designers; financial analysts; sales and business development experts; and growth marketing professionals.
Peter Yu, Texas A&M
Dr. Peter K. Yu is University Distinguished Professor and Regents Professor of Law and Communication at Texas A&M University. He also serves as Director of the Center for Law and Intellectual Property at the university. His academic background includes a J.D. (cum laude) from the Benjamin N. Cardozo School of Law, and he joined Texas A&M in 2015. Dr. Yu has authored or edited ten books and over 200 law-review articles and chapters, and he has delivered lectures in more than 30 countries across all six continents.
Moderator:
Laurent Mayali, UC Berkeley Law
After attending the University of Montpellier (France), Laurent Mayali served as a tenured research scholar at the Max Planck Institute for European Legal History in Frankfurt, Germany, and at France’s Center for National Research. He joined the faculty of Berkeley’s rhetoric department in 1985 before permanently joining the Berkeley Law faculty in 1988.
In 1997 he was elected to a chair in Roman Christianity and sources of modern law at the Ecole Pratique des Hautes Etudes, at the Sorbonne in Paris. He has been a visiting law professor at several universities and has lectured extensively throughout Europe, Africa, and Asia in the areas of legal history and comparative law.
Panel IV: AI’s Challenge to Authorship
Matt Blaszczyk, Michigan Law
Matt Blaszczyk is a Research Fellow in Law and Mobility at the University of Michigan Law School and Managing Editor of the Journal of Law and Mobility. Matt’s scholarship focuses on intellectual property law and the intersections of law and technology. He has published in flagship and specialty journals in the U.S. and internationally. Matt holds an LL.M. from Georgetown University Law Center and an LL.B. from the Dickson Poon School of Law, King’s College London.
James Freedman, Architect Capital (United States)
James is Partner & General Counsel at Architect Capital. Previously, as Senior Counsel at Google Labs, he drove the legal strategy for landmark GenAI launches like Gemini API, AI Studio, NotebookLM, Project Mariner, and Jules, and is a co-inventor on pending GenAI patents. He also co-led Google’s global Terms of Service team and created AI tools to enhance legal operations. A former programmer, journalist, startup co-founder, and entertainment lawyer (as Senior Counsel at Warner Bros.), he brings a strategic, multifaceted perspective to complex legal issues. James is a graduate of Johns Hopkins University and Stanford Law School, where he served on the Law Review board.
Ge Jiang, Tsinghua (China)
Ge Jiang is an associate professor at Tsinghua University Law School. She teaches and writes on copyright, patent, trademark and unfair competition law. She writes in Chinese, English and German. She is constantly asked to provide opinions to legislative body, government institutions and courts.
Hon. Kwangnam Kim, Seoul High Court, IP Division (Korea)
Judge Kim is currently serving at the IP Chamber of the Seoul High Court and previously served at the IP High Court until early 2021. During his tenure at the IP High Court, he also held the position of Director of the International IP Law Research Center. He began his judicial career in 2010 at the Daegu District Court and later served at the Suwon District Court.
Judge Kim earned his B.A. in Law from Yonsei University in 2005 and received an LL.M. Certificate in Law & Technology from Berkeley Law in 2017. In the same year, he completed judicial fellowships as a visiting judge at the California Superior Court and the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California.
He is currently also serving as a member of the Expert Advisory Committee on Artificial Intelligence and Intellectual Property Policy under the Ministry of Intellectual Property.
Dr. Matthias Leistner, Ludwig Maximilian University of Munich (Germany)
Prof. Dr. iur. Matthias Leistner, LL.M. (Cambridge) is Full Professor of Private Law and Intellectual Property Law, with Information and IT-Law at Ludwig Maximilian University (LMU) Munich. His specialties are IP law, in particular patent law and copyright law, data/AI law, trade secrets protection and unfair competition. He has written and/or edited seven books and more than 230 articles and smaller contributions in these fields.
Moderator:
Peter Yu, Texas A&M
Dr. Peter K. Yu is University Distinguished Professor and Regents Professor of Law and Communication at Texas A&M University. He also serves as Director of the Center for Law and Intellectual Property at the university. His academic background includes a J.D. (cum laude) from the Benjamin N. Cardozo School of Law, and he joined Texas A&M in 2015. Dr. Yu has authored or edited ten books and over 200 law-review articles and chapters, and he has delivered lectures in more than 30 countries across all six continents.
Panel V: Copyright Infringement and the Fair Use Defense
Brian Carver, Google
Brian is Senior Copyright Counsel at Google where he advises on copyright matters across the company. He was formerly Product Counsel at YouTube where he also focused on copyright matters including the notice and takedown process and copyright management tools such as Content ID. Previously he was on the faculty at the University of California, Berkeley where he taught intellectual property and cyberlaw courses. He has also litigated intellectual property cases as an associate at a Silicon Valley-based law firm. Brian received his J.D. from UC Berkeley Law and is a member of the State Bar of California. He is originally from Birmingham, Alabama. In 2024 he completed an Associate of Arts degree in Ceramics.
Dr. Matthias Leistner, Ludwig Maximilian University of Munich (Germany)
Prof. Dr. iur. Matthias Leistner, LL.M. (Cambridge) is Full Professor of Private Law and Intellectual Property Law, with Information and IT-Law at Ludwig Maximilian University (LMU) Munich. His specialties are IP law, in particular patent law and copyright law, data/AI law, trade secrets protection and unfair competition. He has written and/or edited seven books and more than 230 articles and smaller contributions in these fields.
Sangchul Park, Seoul National University (Korea)
Seagull Song, King & Wood Mallesons (China)
Dr. Seagull Haiyan Song is an international partner at King and Wood Mallesons (KWM) based in China, heading the Artificial Intelligence and Tech/Media/Entertainment practice in the firm. Dr. Song is a leading authority in the field of US-China intellectual property law and entertainment law. She has advised and worked with multinational companies, international law firms, policymakers, academics and other industry players in Mainland China, Hong Kong and the United States for nearly three decades.
Prior to returning to KWM, Dr. Song was Associate General Counsel at NBA China, a former Professor of Law at Loyola Marymount University Loyola Law School for ten years, a former senior advisor at international law firms, and a former Senior Counsel at Disney overseeing its IP matters in the APAC region. Dr. Song is currently a Standing Committee member of Chinese Copyright Society and an Editorial Board Member of the Journal of the Copyright Society.
Janel Thamkul, Anthropic
Janel Thamkul drives legal strategy on AI as Deputy General Counsel at Anthropic, a frontier AI lab pioneering safe and responsible deployment of foundation models. She helps Anthropic conduct cutting-edge AI R&D while navigating ethical and regulatory frontiers and guides the organization through rapid scaling and growth. Prior to joining Anthropic, Janel led Google’s AI research product counsel team, advising on the development of generative and non-generative AI and other emerging technologies. She also advised teams across the company on AI fairness, safety and responsible innovation governance. Before Google, Janel represented clients in high-stakes IP and business litigation and international arbitration in private practice and externed at US DOJ. Before her legal career, Janel served as a Children’s Advocate at the Center for the Pacific Asian Family emergency shelter in Los Angeles that is culturally specialized to serve Asian and Pacific Islander survivors of domestic violence. Janel also served on the board of Asian Pacific Islander Legal Outreach, a non-profit organization providing culturally competent and linguistically appropriate legal representation, social services, and advocacy.
Moderator:
Daryl Lim, Penn State Dickinson Law
Daryl Lim is the H. Laddie Montague Jr. Chair in Law at Penn State Dickinson Law. He is also the Associate Dean for Research and Strategic Partnerships and Founding Director of the Intellectual Property (IP) Law and Innovation Initiative. At the university level, he is a co-hire at the Institute of Computational and Data Sciences and was appointed to its Research Council in 2025. He is also an affiliate at the Center for Socially Responsible Artificial Intelligence.
He is an award-winning author, observer, and commentator on IP and competition policy trends and how they influence and are influenced by law, technology, economics, and politics. He helps stakeholders understand the world around them. He consults internationally on various IP and antitrust issues.
He is a founding member of the Global IP Alliance and its local chapters in Pennsylvania and Illinois. In addition, he serves as Co-Chair of the University Education Committee and on the Executive Committee of the US IP Alliance. He started the Practicing Law Institute’s Global IP Spotlight series and the Penn State Dickinson Law Profiles in Leadership series and serves as moderator for both.
Closing Remarks
Dr. Yuan HAO, Asia IP & Competition Law Center, BCLT, UC Berkeley Law
Dr. Yuan Hao is Co-Director and Senior Fellow of the Berkeley Asia IP and Competition Law Center (BAIC) and a Lecturer at UC Berkeley School of Law. Her research focuses on two intersecting themes: (1) IP’s role in facilitating human creativity in an AI-powered age, and (2) IP’s role in facilitating private ordering and innovation ecosystems under authoritarian governance.