Sally M. Abel is a partner at Fenwick & West, where she specializes in international trademark and trade name counseling, including the development and management of international trademark portfolios and trademark rights in cyberspace. She represents several major technology companies, including Cisco and Sun Microsystems. She co-teaches the trademark law course at Berkeley Law and is co-authoring the Trademark Case Management Judicial Guide. She received her undergraduate and law degrees from UCLA.
Marc Avsec is a partner and Vice-Chair of the Innovations, Information Technology & Intellectual Property (3iP) Practice Group of Benesch, Friedlander, Coplan & Aronoff, LLP, where he specializes in copyright, trademark, and media law litigation and transactional work. Mark focuses his practice on “old” and “new” media issues, consumer products, technotainment (including music and other entertainment-related technology licensing matters), and general mobile commerce. Before becoming a lawyer, Mark earned a living as a studio musician, producer and songwriter, writing over 500 songs and producing or performing on more than 35 albums for, among other artists, Carlos Santana (“Angel Love”), Bon Jovi (“She Don’t Know Me”), Donnie Iris (“Ah! Leah!” and “Love Is Like A Rock”), Mason Ruffner (“Gypsy Blood”) and Wild Cherry (“Play That Funky Music, White Boy”). Mark is an American Music Award winner and has been nominated for two Grammy Awards. He was a member of Wild Cherry and is the founding member of Donnie Iris and the Cruisers. Mark regularly teaches and is a frequent speaker on entertainment, intellectual property, and media topics. Mark earned his B.A. and J.D. from Cleveland State University.
Shyamkrishna Balganesh is Professor of Law at University of Pennsylvania Law School (Penn Law), where his scholarship focuses on copyright law and common law theory. He earned his B.A. and LL.B. (Hons.) at the National Law School of India, his B.C.L. and M.Phil. at Oxford University (Rhodes Scholar), and his J.D. at Yale Law School.
Hon. Cathy Ann Bencivengo has served on the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of California since 2005, becoming a magistrate judge in 2005 and a district judge in 2012. Prior to her appointment to bench, she practiced intellectual property law at DLA Piper. She earned her B.A. and M.A. from Rutgers University and her J.D. from the University of Michigan Law School.
Steven C. Carlson is managing partner in the Silicon Valley office of Kasowitz, Benson, Torres & Friedman LLP, where he specializes in patent and trade secret litigation. He earned his B.A. from Reed College and his J.D. from Yale Law School. Following law school, he served as a judicial law clerk to the Hon. Roderick R. McKelvie of the U.S. District Court for the District of Delaware and to the Hon. Paul R. Michel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit. Mr. Pasahow is a co-author of the Patent Case Management Judicial Guide.
Kathryn Fritz is the Managing Partner of Fenwick & West. Her practice concentrates on business and intellectual property litigation, with particular emphasis trademark, trade dress, advertising, right of publicity, trade secret, and unfair competition matters. She co-teaches the trademark law course at Berkeley Law and is co-authoring the Trademark Case Management Judicial Guide. She received her undergraduate education at UC Santa Barbara and her J.D. from Georgetown University Law Center.
Hon. J. Rodney Gilstrap has served on the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Texas since 2011, where he handles a large volume and wide variety of patent cases. He received his B.A. and J.D. degrees from Baylor University.
Annette Hurst is a partner in Orrick’s San Francisco office where she focuses on copyright, trademark and trade secrets litigation. She has also litigated patents and complex commercial transactions in the software and Internet industries. She is co-authoring the Trademark Case Management Judicial Guide. She received her undergraduate education at Miami University and her J.D. from New York University School of Law.
Magistrate Judge (Ret.) Edward Infante (JAMS) is known for his ability to mediate complex cases involving a wide range of issues. A former Chief Magistrate Judge of the U.S. District Court, Northern District of California, Judge Infante has more than 30 years of dispute resolution experience. He has particular expertise in complex business litigation, securities class actions, securities, employment, intellectual property, and antitrust cases.
Michael A. Jacobs is a partner at Morrison Foerster, where he co-founded the firm’s Intellectual Property Practice Group and concentrates his practice on litigation of high-technology and intellectual property matters. Mr. Jacobs earned his undergraduate degree from Stanford University and his J.D. from Yale Law School. He is recognized as one of the top intellectual property trial lawyers.
Professor Mark A. Lemley is William H. Neukom Professor of Law at Stanford Law School, Director of the Stanford Program in Law, Science and Technology, and Director of Stanford’s LLM Program in Law, Science and Technology. He is also a partner at Durie Tangri and the founder of Lex Machina, an IP litigation data clearinghouse and analytics firm. He received his B.A. from Stanford University and his J.D. from University of California at Berkeley, after which he clerked for Judge Dorothy W. Nelson of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit. Professor Lemley has written widely in the fields of intellectual property law and antitrust law.
Hon. Pierre Leval has served on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit since 1993, and formerly was a judge of the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York. He earned his B.A. from Harvard College and his J.D. from Harvard Law School. After law school, he clerked for Judge Henry J. Friendly of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit. Before joining the bench in 1977, he worked at the District Attorney’s Office of New York County, serving as First Assistant and Chief Assistant, and was in private practice at Cleary Gottlieb Steen & Hamilton, focusing on international finance and litigation. He began his legal career as an Assistant U.S. Attorney in the Southern District of New York, where he became Chief Appellate Attorney. Judge Leval has published and lectured on copyright, intellectual-property and free-speech issues.
Professor Peter S. Menell is Koret Professor of Law at the University of California at Berkeley School of Law (Boalt Hall). Professor Menell co-founded and serves as a Director of the Berkeley Center for Law & Technology. He received his S.B. from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, his M.A. and Ph.D. (economics) from Stanford University, and his J.D. from Harvard Law School. After graduating from law school, he clerked for the Hon. Jon O. Newman of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit. Professor Menell has written extensively in the fields of intellectual property law, environmental law and policy, and property law. He is co-author of several leading casebooks on intellectual property law. He served as one of the inaugural Thomas Alva Edison Visiting Professionals at the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office in 2012-13 and as Vice-Chair of the National Academies of Sciences project on copyright and innovation. Since 1997, Professor Menell organized more than 50 intellectual property education programs for the Federal Judicial Center and has co-authored the Patent Case Management Judicial Guide (now in its third edition). He is leading efforts to produce the Copyright Case Management Judicial Guide and the Trademark Case Management Judicial Guide.
Professor Robert Merges is the Wilson, Sonsini, Goodrich & Rosati Professor of Law at the University of California at Berkeley School of Law (Boalt Hall). He received his B.S. from Carnegie-Mellon University, his. J.D. from Yale University, and his LL.M. and J.S.D. from Columbia University. Professor Merges has written extensively on intellectual property law and is co-author of several leading casebooks and texts, including Justifying Intellectual Property (2011). Professor Merges co-founded and served as Managing Director of Ovidian LLC, a consulting and informatics company specializing in assessing and valuing patent portfolios.
David Nimmer is of counsel to Irell & Manella LLP in Los Angeles. He also teaches as a Visiting Professor at UCLA Law School and is a Distinguished Scholar at the Berkeley Center for Law and Technology. Since 1985, Professor Nimmer has updated and revised Nimmer on Copyright, the standard reference treatise in the field, first published in 1963 by his late father, Professor Melville B. Nimmer. That treatise is routinely cited by U.S. and foreign courts at all levels in copyright litigation. Mr. Nimmer has written numerous articles and books on copyright and related topics. He has also participated in the litigation of a wide range of copyright cases. He earned his undergraduate degree from Stanford University and his law degree from Yale Law School. He clerked for Judge Warren Ferguson on U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit.
Professor Tyler Ochoa is Professor of Law at Santa Clara School of Law, where he specializes in copyright law. He earned his A.B. and J.D. from Stanford University and clerked for the Hon. Cecil F. Poole of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit. Following his clerkship, he practiced law at Brown & Bain in Palo Alto, California, where he specialized in copyright and trade secret litigation involving computer software. He is also a two-time “Jeopardy!” champion and a champion on “Win Ben Stein’s Money”.
Hon. Kathleen M. O’Malley was elevated to the Court of Appeals for Federal Circuit in 2010 after serving sixteen years on the District Court for the Northern District of Ohio. She is the first district judge to serve on the Federal Circuit. Prior to her appointment to the federal bench, Judge O’Malley was Chief of Staff and First Assistant in the Ohio State Attorney General’s Office. She received her undergraduate degree from Kenyon College and her J.D. from Case Western Reserve University School of Law.
George Pappas is a partner at Covington & Burling, where he specializes in patent litigation. He is a Fellow of the American College of Trial Lawyers and Chairman of its Complex Litigation Committee. He is also Chairman of the Editorial Committee and one of the co-authors of the Anatomy of a Patent Case (2009), published in conjunction with the Federal Judicial Center. Mr. Pappas is a co-author of the third edition of the Patent Case Management Judicial Guide. Mr. Pappas received his undergraduate and law degrees from the University of Maryland.
Lynn H. Pasahow is a partner at Fenwick & West LLP, where he focuses on patent and other intellectual property litigation, counseling, licensing, and mediation, principally relating to bioscience, software, and Internet technologies. Mr. Pasahow is a co-author of the Patent Case Management Judicial Guide. He earned his J.D. from the University of California at Berkeley (Boalt Hall) School of Law and his undergraduate degree from Stanford University.
Lou Petrich is a member of Leopold, Petrich & Smith, a Los Angeles firm that specializes in the defense of claims for copyright and trademark infringement, defamation, invasion of the rights of privacy and publicity, and idea submission cases. Mr. Petrich is a Fellow in the American College of Trial Lawyers. He regularly renders legal opinions on special clearance problems in the motion picture and television fields, including termination rights, fair use and the like. He argued the Stewart v. Abend (“Rear Window”) case to the United States Supreme Court, and has defended motion picture studios in copyright cases in trial and appellate courts around the country.
James Pooley is Senior Counsel at Orrick, where he specializes in intellectual property litigation and counseling. He was a driving force behind the recently adopted Defend Trade Secrets Act, which created a federal civil claim for misappropriation of a company’s know-how. Jim has held leadership roles in several national organizations, including president of the American Intellectual Property Law Association and chairman of the National Inventors Hall of Fame. In 2009, the White House appointed Jim Deputy Director General of the World Intellectual Property Organization, an agency of the United Nations, where he served for five years as director of the international patent system.
Matthew Powers is the lead partner at Tensegrity Law Group, LLP. He is one of the nation’s most experienced patent trial lawyers. He has litigated and tried cases in jurisdictions nationwide involving a wide range of technologies, including semiconductor, biomedical, computer, computer peripherals, cellular, holographic, digital media and specialty chemical products. Mr. Powers has published articles on various aspects of intellectual property law and litigation. He is a co-author of the Patent Case Management Judicial Guide. Mr. Powers received his J.D. from Harvard Law School and a B.S. from Northwestern University.
Hon. Kevin Turner (PTAB) is Lead Administrative Patent Judge, Patent Trial and Appeal Board, at the United States Patent and Trademark Office in San Jose, California. He was appointed as an Administrative Patent Judge in October of 2007. Judge Turner received a J.D. degree from George Mason University, a Ph.D. degree in Physics from North Carolina State University, and a B.S. degree in Physics from Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute. He began his career at the Naval Research Laboratory where he conducted research focused on nucleation in the chemical vapor deposition processes of diamond materials, which was also the focus of his Ph.D. thesis. Judge Turner later joined the United States Patent and Trademark Office as a Patent Examiner in the semiconductor manufacturing art. Judge Turner also has spent time in private practice.
Kathi Vidal is managing partner in Winston Strawn’s Silicon Valley office, which she specializes in patent litigation. Ms. Vidal received her B.S. and M.S. in Electrical Engineering before attending the University of Pennsylvania Law School. She clerked for Judge Alvin A. Schall of the U.S Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit. She worked for five years as a systems and software design engineer with General Electric, where she graduated from the Edison Engineering Program and designed one of the first leading edge expert systems (neural networks, fuzzy logic) for aircraft. She has extensive high-tech patent litigation in a myriad of technologies.
Hon. (Ret.) Ronald M. Whyte served on the Northern District of California District Court from 1992 to 2016. He received in undergraduate degree in Mathematics from Wesleyan University and law degree from the USC Gould School of Law. After serving as a Lieutenant in the United States Navy from 1968 to 1971 as part of the Judge Advocate General Corps, he work in private practice for nearly two decades in San Jose, California before being appointed to the Santa Clara Superior Court in 1989. While on the federal bench, Judge Whyte played a central role in the development of the Northern District of California’s Patent Local Rules and model patent jury instructions. Although he took senior status in 2009, Judge Whyte continues to maintain an active docket and is among the designated judges in the Northern District of California’s Patent Pilot Program.