Weston Anson is Chairman of CONSOR, an intellectual asset consulting firm specializing in trademark, patent and copyright licensing and valuation. Wes has advised a "who's who" of leading brands and IP rights holders, including Ford, DuPont, L'Oréal, Dr. Seuss and Marvel. He is author of several books on IP strategy and valuation, most recently IP Valuation for the Future. Wes has helped to develop and establish accepted methods of valuation for brands, technologies and other IP rights, and has testified in complex litigation and trials throughout the world. After receiving his MBA with honors from Harvard University, he served as a consultant Booz-Allen & Hamilton.  

Keith Bergelt is CEO of Open Invention Network, a collaborative enterprise that enables innovation in open source and around Linux. Prior to joining the Open Invention Network, Keith served as president and CEO of two Hedge Funds – Paradox Capital and IPI – formed to unlock the considerable asset value of patents, trademarks and copyrights in middle market companies. Prior to that he served as General Manager of the Strategic Intellectual Asset Management business unit at Motorola Corporation and as Motorola’s director of Technology Strategy. Earlier in his career, he served as a diplomat in the U.S. State Department. Keith has been on the CIPU board of directors since 2016.

Bruce Beman is Managing Director of Brody Berman Associates, a management consulting and communications firm that helps innovative businesses to refine and convey their message. Since 1988, Brody Berman has supported 200+ intellectual property-rich businesses, portfolios and strategies, as well as many law firms and their clients. Bruce is responsible for five books about the business of IP rights, including From Ideas to Assets, and has written the Intangible Investor column for IAM magazine since 2003. IP CloseUp, an update on trends that he publishes, is read in more than 50 countries. In 2016, he founded the Center for Intellectual Property Understanding which serves as chairman. Bruce holds a Masters’ Degree film scholarship from Columbia University, where he taught for four years in the graduate program and completed course work for the Ph.D.

James Conley is clinical professor of technology at Northwestern University. He serves on the faculty of both the Kellogg School of Management and the McCormick School of Engineering at Northwestern University. He is a faculty contributor in the Kellogg Center for Research in Technology & Innovation and serves as a Faculty Fellow at the Segal Design Institute (NU IDEA). Beyond academia, Professor Conley is an inventor, ad active advocate of IP education for business and other students, and leads seminars globally for the World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO). He is an appointed member of the U.S. Department of Commerce Trademark Public Advisory Committee of the Patent and Trademark Office. Professor Conley’s research investigates the strategic use of intangible assets and intellectual properties to build and sustain competitive advantage. 

Q. Todd Dickinson is Senior Partner at Polsinelli, LLC, a leading U.S. law firm, and served as Under Secretary of Commerce for Intellectual Property and Director United States Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO). He was Vice President and Chief IP Counsel for General Electric and served as Executive Director of American Intellectual Property Law Association (AIPLA), an association of more than 15,000 members, and one of the leading policy and advocacy organizations in intellectual property. Todd serves as a Director at SightSound Technologies Inc. He moderated the  panel "Making IP Awareness a Higher Priority" at IPAS 2017.

Bowman Heiden is Deputy Director of Center for Intellectual Property at Chalmers University of Technology, University of Gothenburg, Sweden. His background is in engineering and technology management and economics with a current focus on the intersection of law, economics, and innovation. He is developer of the CIP FORUM – one of the leading knowledge-based business events worldwide. Professor Heiden is co-developer of the Intellectual Capital Management master’s programme, a graduate education programme for business, engineering and law students focused on knowledge-based business development and management. Bo has served as the innovation director for the Qatar Science and Technology Park where he was responsible for driving innovation strategy and IP policy. Earilier in his career he played and coached professional basketball.

Orin Heskowitz is the Senior Vice President of Intellectual Property and Technology Transfer for Columbia University, as well as Executive Director of Columbia Technology Ventures (CTV). He also is an Adjunct Professor at Columbia’s Business and Engineering Schools. He has served on boards or serves as the Principle Investigator for a number of innovation and entrepreneurial initiatives, including the NYC Media Lab. Orin was appointed by U.S. Secretary of Commerce to the National Advisory Council on Innovation and Entrepreneurship. He received his BA from Yale and his MBA from the Wharton School of Business. Prior to joining CTV, he spent seven years at the Boston Consulting Group as a strategy consultant, and was previously an entrepreneur and a consultant to start-ups.

Brian Hinman is Chief Innovation Officer at Aon IP Solutions. A seasoned IP executive, Brian has over 27 years experience managing all aspects of intellectual property for some of the world's largest companies. Most recently he served as Chief IP Officer of Royal Philips and CEO of Philips Intellectual Property and Standards. Prior to that, he was co-founder of Unified Patents Inc., and before that he was Vice President of Licensing for InterDigital. Brian has served as Vice President of IP and Licensing for Verizon, the founding CEO of Allied Security Trust, and also served as Vice President of IP and Licensing for IBM. He has been a board member of the Center for IP Understanding since 2017. Brian is a graduate of the University of Pittsburgh and Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute. 

Andrei Iancu is Under Secretary of Commerce for Intellectual Property and Director of the United States Patent and Trademark Office. Prior to being named, Director Iancu was the managing partner of Irell & Manella. His legal practice focused on intellectual property litigation. He has taught patent law at the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA), which is his alma mater. As an attorney, Direcotr Iancu has appeared before the USPTO for the Federal Circuit. Prior to law school, Director Iancu was an engineer at Hughes Aircraft Co. where he received several awards including the Malcolm R. Currie Innovation Award. He earned his bachelor’s degree in aerospace engineering and a master’s degree in mechanical engineering.

Patrick Kilbride is vice president of international intellectual property for the Global Intellectual Property Center (GIPC) at the U.S. Chamber of Commerce. He oversees the Center’s multilateral and international programs promoting the protection and enforcement of intellectual property rights, managing a team of country and regional experts. Previously, Patrick was Executive Director, Americas Strategic Policy Initiatives, and Executive Vice President, Association of American Chambers of Commerce in Latin America (AACCLA), within the Chamber’s International Division. He served on the IPAS 2017 panel on IP essentials.

Dr. Shaheen E Lakhan is a physician scientist and educator board-certified in neurology and pain medicine. He is currently Medical Director of Sage Therapeutics in Cambridge, MA. Previously, he was chief of pain management at Carilion Clinic and founding executive director of the Global Neuroscience Initiative Foundation (GNIF). Shakeen is author of "The State of IP Education Worldwide" and "Stop Piracy with Edification: Intellectual Property Education in School." His education and training includes Massachusetts General Hospital, the Cleveland Clinic, Technion Institute and Harvard Medical School. 

David Lowery is the lead singer/songwriter for the rock band Cracker. He teaches in the Music Business Certificate Program at Terry College of Business, University of Georgia. David is well-known blogger (The Techordist) and advocate for the intellectual property rights of musicians and songwriters. He was instrumental in a class action brought by songwriters against Spotify that was settled favorably in 2017. He also is a mathematician who earlier in his career served as a quantitative analyst at a Chicago hedge fund. 

Michael Loney studied economics and politics at the University of Manchester. After travelling for a year in India and south-east Asia failed to inspire any more enlightened ideas, he started his career in journalism in London in 2002 as a graduate trainee at Euromoney Institutional Investor. Michael is responsible for all of Managing IP's Americas content, including writing, commissioning and editing articles. He writes about all aspect of intellectual property, with a particular focus on U.S. litigation and developments at the Patent Trial and Appeal Board. 

Josh Malone quit his corporate job in 2006 to take his shot at the American  Inventors' Dream. Eight years later, savings depleted he hit a homerun with Bunch O Balloons, an innovative solution to the age-old challenge of filling and tying water balloons, which instantly became the number one selling spring/summer toy. It was just as quickly knocked off resulting in a patent litigation now totaling sox patents, five patent suits, five PTAB petitions/trials, four preliminary injunctions, and eight appeals at the Federal Circuit. He is currently a Fellow with US Inventor working to restore the patent system.

Gregory Mandel is the Dean and Peter J. Liacouras Professor of Law at Temple Law School. He is a leading international scholar on intellectual property law, innovation, and the interface among technology and law. Dean Mandel’s research includes public perception of IP rights. His publications have been selected as among the best intellectual property and patent law articles of the year three times. His article Patently Non-Obvious, an experimental study that provides the first empirical demonstration of the hindsight bias in patent law, was identified as one of the most cited patent law articles of the past decade, and his experimental studies have been cited by the Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit and in briefs filed before the United States Supreme Court. He is author of the article, "What is IP for? Experiments in expert and lay perceptions."

Adam Mossoff is Professor of Law at Antonin Scalia Law School, George Mason University. He is a Founder and Executive Director of the Center for the Protection of Intellectual Property (CPIP). His academic research has been cited by the Supreme Court, by the Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit, and by federal agencies. Professor Mossoff has been invited to testify several times before the Senate and the House on proposed patent legislation, and he has spoken at numerous congressional staff briefings. His writings on patent law and policy have appeared in the New York Times, Forbes and many other media outlets. He is a member of the IP Rights Policy Committee of ANSI, the Academic Advisory Committee of the Copyright Alliance, and has served as past Chair of of the Intellectual Property Committee of the IEEE-USA.

Malathi Nayak is a senior reporter covering intellectual property news for Bloomberg BNA. She previously worked for Reuters in New York covering telecom, media and technology news. She started her career in journalism as a legal reporter in New Delhi covering news at the intersection of law and business for Mint, the business daily of the Hindustan Times. She holds a Master of Science in journalism from Northwestern University’s Medill School of Journalism.

Marshall Phelps is a seminal figure in the modern history of intellectual property. He was instrumental in establishing IP rights as a business unit at IBM in the 1980s, eventually generating $2 billion in annual patent and IP revenues. He was recruited by Bill Gates to build Microsoft’s IP department, and took the company from a dozen licenses to over 600 when he retired in 2010, in the process helping to build one of the most effective patent portfolios in the world. Marshall, who helped to launch Intellectual Ventures, was elected in 2006 to the initial class of the IP Hall of Fame. He is the author of Burning the Ships: Intellectual Property and the Transformation of Microsoft has written for Forbes on the challenges business leaders face in developing and implementing innovation-driven growth strategies. Among the universities at which he has taught or lectured are Cornell, Duke, USC and Chalmers University in Sweden. He is a founding director of CIPU.

For the past five year Maysa Razavi has worked with the International Trademark Association (INTA) on the frontline of the war against counterfeits. As the External Relations Manager and the Head of Anti-counterfeiting at INTA, Maysa leads the organization’s anti-counterfeiting policy worldwide. She works on both U.S. Amicus Briefs and manages all of INTA’s activities in the Middle East. Her has involved a wide range of industries from pharmaceuticals to fashion.

Manny Schecter is Chief Patent Counsel and Associate General Counsel at IBM. He leads IBM’s worldwide intellectual property law organization on patent matters and advises on intellectual property strategy and policy. He serves on the board of directors of the Intellectual Property Owners Association (IPO), the IPO Education Foundation (where he serves as the president), Allied Security Trust, the Center for Intellectual Property Understanding (CIPU). He served on the board of directors of the American Intellectual Property Law Association from 2013-2016.

Ken joined LOT in April of 2015, bringing over 20 years of experience managing all areas of intellectual property. Previously, Ken was with some of the largest patent holders the world including Apple, Micron, Motorola, Intel and most recently as the Vice President of IP at ARM. Ken drafted over 300 patent applications while at Motorola and Intel, and managed all U.S. patent prosecution at Intel. As Chief IP Counsel of Numonyx which was later acquired by Micron, Ken led strategic IP Licensing for two years before moving to Apple. At Apple, Ken developed the IP strategy for future products and acquired and defended patents from PAE assertions. Ken then went on to be the VP of IP at ARM before being selected by the Board of Directors to be the first CEO of LOT Network. Ken served on the IPAS 2017 panel addressing good and bad IP behaviors. 

Ruth Soetendorp is Professor Emerita and Associate Director of the Centre for Intellectual Property Policy and Management at Bournemouth University. She is a visiting Lecturer at Cass Business School, City University of London, where she teaches IP management on Masters and BSc programs. Ruth is Iimmediate past chair of the Intellectual Property Awareness Network and founding convenor of its Education Group. She led IPAN’s research with UK National Union of Students into students’ attitudes to IP, and University IP policies, and was IP lead on EUIPO’s research into IP education in schools. She is a regular contributor to the WIPO Academy international programme. Nottingham Law Journal recently published her article reflecting on 30 years of experience as an IP educator. 

Tony Trippe is the Managing Director at Patinformatics, LLC, a supplier of patent landscape reports that help to explain how technology is evolving and its impact on business and innovation. He is an acknowledged expert in patent analytics, and patent landscape reports, having written the Guidelines for the Preparation of Patent Landscape Reports for the World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO). He is an Adjunct Professor at Illinois Institute of Technology / Chicago-Kent College of Law, teaching a course on patent analysis, and patent landscape reports for corporate decision making. Tony was named one of the Top 300 IP Strategists by IAM Magazine, and has been asked to speak on patent analytics and patent landscape reports at conferences around the world.

Jay Walker is one of America’s best-known business inventors and entrepreneurs. He has founded multiple successful start-up companies across various industries that today serve tens of millions of customers each. The most recognizable are Priceline and Synapse Group. He currently serves as Chairman & CEO of Upside Travel, Executive Chairman of Walker Innovation, Curator of TEDMED,  an annual conference focusing on health and medicine, with a year-round web-based community, and Chairman of Walker Digital. Mr. Walker is eighth on the U.S. all-time U.S. inventor list with 950 issued utility patents. At his current pace will surpass Thomas Edison in or around 2022. 

As Director of the Office of Education and Outreach for the USPTO, Joyce Ward and her team travel throughout the country to develop and implement programming that increases knowledge and awareness of intellectual property among future innovators and the people who educate them. She builds the kinds of programs that capture the imaginations of future leaders in STEM one mind at a time. As a former USPTO trademark examining attorney in the early 1990s, Joyce returned to the agency when she was selected to lead a new office dedicated to exposing children and young adults to STEM and IP, especially those students who might not otherwise have had access to such programming. 

Elaine T.L. Wu is the Acting Senior Counsel for China at the Office of Policy and International Affairs in the USPTO. She is responsible for leading the “China Team,” a dedicated group of attorneys with expertise on China’s intellectual property system. The China Team works with other branches of the U.S. government to develop intellectual property policy focused on improving China’s IP environment for the benefit of U.S. companies doing business there. The China Team also conducts extensive outreach to U.S. companies to educate them on how to protect/enforce their IP in China. Prior to joining the USPTO Elain was an attorney at Howrey & Simon and also worked at the International Trade Commission’s Office of Unfair Import Investigation.