Plenary Sessions
Monday, October 15
8:30 am - 9:00 am
The President's Opening Address
Where Are We Now – A State of the Union – Connecting and Collaborating
9:00 am - 10:00 am
Keynote Speaker
Connecting & Collaborating: The Convergence of Life Sciences and High Tech
As biotechnology and pharmacology begin to intersect with nanotechnology, electronics, communications, and data metrics, what will future services, products, business models, and markets look like? Melding the sciences is one thing, but what special regulatory problems might we anticipate? As IP licensing professionals, will it shake up our world such that we should be looking for another career before then? Or will we see it as nothing more than an extension of the opportunities and problems we enjoy today?
Speaker:
|
| Dr. Eric J. Topol,
Director, Scripps Translational Science Institute
A premier cardiologist, genetic researcher, and technologist, Dr. Topol is leading the movement to modernize medical treatment through the latest technology. He has been named the Most Influential Physician Executive in Healthcare by Modern Healthcare, Doctor of the Decade by the Institute for Scientific Information, and ;a Rock Star of Science by GQ. Click here to listen to Dr. Topol's talk at TEDMED 
We will have copies of his book available for purchase and signing following his presentation. |
12:00 pm - 2:00 pm
Luncheon Speaker
The Role of IP in Rebuilding Economies Following the Arab Spring
The Secretary of State of Investment & International Cooperation and LESI Certified Licensing Practitioner Alaya Bettaieb will speak about the economic road maps for recovery of post-revolution Tunisia and other North African countries following the turmoil of the past year. Mr. Bettaieb will focus particularly on the international partnerships required to rebuild an economy through IP-based development, and will explain why intellectual property is important to improve the growth prospects and future prosperity of Northern Africa and the Middle East.
Speaker:
 |
| Alaya Bettaieb, Secretary of State Investment & International Cooperation, Government of Tunisia |
Tuesday, October 16
9:00 am - 10:15 am
Plenary Session
Is High Tech Crazy? Are We Experiencing a Patent Bubble?
What is going on with patent buys? A new NPE cleverly called Rockstar Bidco spends $4.5 billion for Nortel patents. Google buys Motorola Mobility and 17,000 patents for $12.5 billion. Microsoft pays more than a billion dollars for less than 1,000 AOL patents and then turns around and sells two-thirds of them to Facebook. Have patents taken center stage and deals like this will continue indefinitely? Or is this simple speculation, no different from tulips and housing? Will there be a repeat of the crash of internet stocks? Why or why won't the same pattern be seen in life sciences? Industry leaders and pundits including Joff Wild, editor of IAM Magazine and Dooyong Lee of Acacia will dissect what has happened and opine about what might come next.
Speakers:
 |  | 
| 
|
| Joe Dillon, MBA, CLP, Managing Director, Investor Relations and Business Development, Biotechnology Industry Organization (BIO) | Michael Lasinski, Founder, 284 Partners | Dooyong Lee, CEO, Acacia | Joff Wild, Editor, IAM Magazine |
10:45 am - 12:00 pm
New Crowd-Sourcing Session
Carving Out Your Commercial Space - Strategies and Trade Offs
In today's sometimes chaotic environment of securing the space necessary to implement corporate product and marketing strategies, IP objectives for various industries can have differing requirements. Life sciences might require a small number of fundamental patents to win over very large markets while high tech companies build massive arsenals and industry standard portfolios to do the same. But even within the same industry there are many alternative strategies for ensuring freedom to operate in the marketplace.
This session will focus on the questions of how our enterprises can best use the tools available to us to carve out our commercial space. Input from a variety of industry sectors will be solicited so that we all may expand our toolboxes, knowing that there is no one right answer in any deal. The audience will participate throughout by communicating throughout the assembly hall via crowd-sourcing techniques, including texting and tweeting, with the results seen by all.
Facilitators:
Wednesday, October 17
9:00 am - 10:30 am
Plenary Session
Benches Unleashed: Judicial Views on Fixing the Systems
Outspoken Honourable Judge Roger Hughes of the Federal Court of Canada and ever candid Honorable Paul Michel, retired Chief Judge of the United States Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit will discuss Canadian and US patent environments in a global context and raise and address issues they perceive will positively or negatively impact inventiveness over the next decade. Are the US and Canada getting it right as they evolve case law and pass legislation? As licensing professionals, what worries should we have about where this is all headed?
Speakers:
12:00 pm - 2:00 pm
Luncheon Speaker
How Outcomes of Patent Fights have Changed the Course of History
While history books generally point at the importance of inventions to the betterment of everyone, what if the intellectual property rights associated with them had been treated differently? What if the patent fights over the cotton gin, light bulb, telegraph and other cornerstone inventions were resolved differently? Heritage Hall of Fame historian and retired professor Maury Klein will explain the significance of key patent decisions and hypothesize how the world would be changed if they went the other way.
Speaker:
|
| Maury Klein, Professor Emeritus of History, University of Rhode Island |