Patent Reform in the 112th Congress

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BroadbandBreakfast.com presents

The Intellectual Property Breakfast Club

Event

"Patent Reform in the 112th Congress"

Change is coming to the world of intellectual property. The Obama Administration's IP Czar is taking a hands-on approach to brokering industry-led solutions to the problems of copyright piracy and the Intellectual Property Breakfast Club is emerging as the place at the center of the Washington IP debate. Every month, we offer a neutral forum to discuss the policy, business, legal and technological issues surrounding copyrights, patents and trademarks on the internet. BroadbandBreakfast.com hosts the Intellectual Property Breakfast Club on the Second Tuesday of the month. It is a natural companion to our successful Broadband Breakfast Club, which meets on the Third Tuesday of the month.

Intellectual property advocates, policy-makers, journalists, top officials and the general public, all seeking to trade insights on these important issues, are invited to attend this event of the BroadbandBreakfast.com, an online news service focusing on internet policy and intellectual property.

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Event Details

Title: Patent Reform inthe 112th Congress

Date: Tuesday, March 8, 2011, 8 a.m. - 10 a.m. 

Where: Clyde's of Gallery Place, 707 7th Street NW, Washington, DC 20001

The breakfast begins at 8 a.m., followed by a discussion, beginning shortly after 8:30 a.m. and ending by 10 a.m.

Panelists:

Dana Colarulli, Director of the Office of Governmental Affairs, U.S. Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) 

Dana Colarulli is the Director of the Office of Governmental Affairs at U.S. Patent and Trademark Office, which he joined in December 2009. He has fifteen years of experience working in and with the Federal government and the U.S. Congress in various roles. Mr. Colarulli addresses a wide range of substantive issues at USPTO including patent reform, performance rights and trademark issues. Mr. Colarulli coordinated USPTO personnel and resources tosupport passage of H.R. 5874, legislation (Public Law 111-224) to increase USPTO's FY 2010 spending authority by $129 million. Prior to this position, Mr. Colarulli served Director of Government Relations for the Intellectual Property Owners Association (IPO) for seven years. Previously, Mr. Colarulli served on Capitol Hill as an assistant legislative counsel in the Office of Senator Maria Cantwell from Washington State addressing technology and IP issues. Mr. Colarulli also worked at the Washington, DC law firm of Verner, Liipfert, Bernhard McPherson & Hand (now a part of DLA Piper Rudnick) in the Federal Affairs and Legislative Practice Group Prior to this position, he served in the Federal government for five years in the U.S. Small Business Administration’s Office of Entrepreneurial Development and at the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, Administration for Children and Families in various positions. Mr. Colarulli received a JD from American University’s Washington College of Law in Washington, DC and a BA from Boston College in Chestnut Hill, MA.

Paul R. Michel, Chief Circuit Judge (retired), US Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit

As a judge on the US Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit for the last 22 years, Paul Michel helped shape the landscape of patent law in the US and handed down some of the court's most important judgments.  He joined the court in 1988 and assumed the duties of Chief Judge in 2004 - a post he held until his retirement in May 2010. Michel has written over 800 opinions during his time on the bench with approximately one-third of those being for patent cases.  In 2005 he was appointed by the Chief Justice of the United States to also serve as one of seven judges on the Executive Committee of the Judicial Conference. In 2008 Chief Judge Michel was awarded the first annual Lifetime Achievement Award by the Richard Linn American Inn of Court, the Sedona Conference Lifetime Achievement Award, the first award for “Outstanding Achievement in the Area of Intellectual Property Law” of the Philadelphia Intellectual Property Law Association, and the annual Judicial Honoree Award of the Bar Association of the District of Columbia. In 2010 he received the U.S. Patent and Trademark Offices’ Federico Award for “outstanding contribution to the Patent and Trademark Systems of the United States of America”; the North American Lifetime Achievement Award by Managing Intellectual Property Magazine; the Distinguished Intellectual Property Professional Award from the Intellectual Property Owners Education Foundation; the career achievement award of the American Intellectual Property Law Association (AIPLA); and was one of five global figures inducted into Intellectual Asset Management magazine’s Intellectual Property Hall of Fame.  He has been a Member of Honor of FICPI since 2001.

Brian Pomper, Executive Director, Innovation Alliance

The Innovation Alliance represents innovators, patent owners and stakeholders from a diverse range of industries that believe in the critical importance of maintaining a strong patent system that supports innovative enterprises of all sizes. Brian Pomper is an attorney and partner at Akin Gump. He has more than a decade of experience working in the government and representing businesses in the private sector. Mr. Pomper is the founding partner of Parven Pomper Strategies (PPS) Inc. He has helped clients on political strategy and advocated for them before the U.S. Congress and administrative agencies on a wide array of issues, including international trade, customs, tax policy, health care, patent reform, intellectual property and financial services. Prior to the founding of PPS, Mr. Pomper was the chief international trade counsel on the Democratic staff of the Senate Finance Committee, under Chairman Max Baucus, D-Mont. In that capacity, he was responsible for advising Chairman Baucus and the other members of the Committee on all aspects of the Committee’s international trade and economic agenda, including oversight of ongoing trade negotiations, market access issues, international trade disputes, intellectual property and international tax and customs issues. He was involved in virtually every major international economic issue that arose during his four years on the Committee staff. Mr. Pomper earned his B.S. in 1992 from Massachusetts Institute of Technology and his J.D. in 1995 from Cornell University Law School. He is a member of the District of Columbia and New York bars, and is admitted to practice before the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office. He serves as an adjunct professor teaching international trade policy and politics at George Washington’s Graduate School of Political Management.

Hans Sauer, Deputy General Counsel, BIO

Hans Sauer, Ph.D., J.D., is Deputy General Counsel for Intellectual Property for the Biotechnology Industry Organization (BIO), a major trade association representing over 1,100 biotechnology companies from the medical, agricultural, environmental, and industrial sectors in the United States and internationally. At BIO, Dr. Sauer advises the organization's board of directors and various staff committees on patent and other intellectual property-related matters. Prior to his current position, he served as Chief Patent Counsel for MGI Pharma, Inc., in Bloomington, MN, and Senior Patent Counsel for Guilford Pharmaceuticals Inc. in Baltimore, MD. Dr. Sauer has 15 years of professional in-house experience in the biotechnology industry, where he worked on several research and drug development programs, being responsible for patent prosecution and portfolio oversight, clinical trial health information privacy, and sales and marketing legal compliance. He has an M.S. degree in Biology from the University of Ulm in his native Germany, a Ph.D. in Neuroscience from the University of Lund, Sweden, and a J.D. from Georgetown University Law Center in Washington, D.C., where he serves as adjunct professor.

Additional panelists have been invited

The event will be moderated by BroadbandBreakfast.com's Contributing Editor, Sarah Lai Stirland. Lai Stirland joined BroadbandBreakfast.com from a background of covering business, finance and legal affairs, telecommunications and tech policy for 15 years from New York, Washington and San Francisco. She has written for Red Herring, National Journal’s Technology Daily, Portfolio.com and Wired.com. She’s a native of London and Hong Kong, and is currently based in San Francisco.

The Intellectual Property Breakfast Club is a "widely attended event" under House of Representatives Rule 25, clause 5(a)(4)(A).

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