Event Overview
USPTO (The United States Patent and Trademark Office) is opening a satellite office in Silicon Valley. The United States patent system is changing from a first-to-invent to a first-tofile system, effective March 16, 2013. We are at the dawn of a historical change. How does this affect innovations? What lessons can Silicon Valley businesses learn from the Japanese, who have had the experience of dealing with a first-to-file system for many years? Will the dependence of US and Japan on intellectual properties as a protection of their innovations bring their IP str
ategies closer? Please join us for an interactive evening program with representative panelists from the hi-tech industry, academia, the venture capitalist community, and a large international corporation, as they present a variety of approaches in dealing with the changing landscape of IP and patent law in their respective industries. Case studies will be presented,
| Panel: | Linda Beach – Patent Attorney, Electronic Arts Inc. Don Butler – Managing Director, Thomvest Ventures Katharine Ku – Director at Office of Technology Licensing, Stanford Miku Mehta (Moderator) – Partner, Sughrue Mion Michael Shpizner – VP, General Counsel, Fujitsu America, Inc. |
| Date: | Thursday, September 20, 2012 Registration/Networking: 5:30 P.M. – 6:00 P.M. Program: 6:00 P.M. – 8:15 P.M. Networking: 8:15 P.M. – 9:00 P.M. |
| Venue: | Oshman Family JCC (Jewish Community Center) Taube Koret Campus, F-401, 4th Floor, Freidenrich Conference Center 3921 Fabian Way Palo Alto, CA 94303 |
| Fees: | $15: Early Bird Discount for first 30 registrations by Sunday, September 2 (11:00 pm) Please take advantage of early bird discount. Quantity is limited so act fast! We sold out at our last forum so register now. $20: Early Registration by Sunday, September 16 (11:00 pm) $35: Late Registration by Wednesday, September 19 (12:00 pm) $50: Walk-ins (Seats are limited and may not be available) Food, including sushi and beverages, will be served. |
| Registration: | http://www.keizai.org |
| DRESS: | Business casual |
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Forum Flyer – English (pdf) Forum Flyer – Japanese (pdf) |
Featured Panelists and Moderator
Linda Beach is the in-house patent attorney for Electronic Arts Inc., a leading global interactive entertainment software company. EA develops, publishes, and distributes interactive software worldwide for video game systems, personal computers, wireless devices and the Internet. Prior to joining EA, Linda was an in-house patent attorney for other Silicon Valley tech companies including Nokia and Xerox PARC, and was a patent prosecution associate at Graham & James LLP in Palo Alto. Linda is originally from Massachusetts, where she got her BSEE from Worcester Polytechnic Institute. Linda earned her JD at Suffolk University in Boston while she worked as an engineer for Digital Equipment Corporation.
Don Butler is a Managing Director with Thomvest Ventures. He currently serves on the Board of Directors for Apsalar, Axcient, Milyoni, Netbase, and YottaMark. Don’s past investments have included FlashSoft (acquired by SanDisk), GuardianEdge (Symantec), Okena (Cisco), and Parakey (Facebook). Before joining Thomvest, Don led the Japanese business development efforts for several start-up companies in the software and networking industries while at Asia Pacific Ventures. Previously, Don was an Analyst with Lehman Brothers, where he worked with clients in the software and semiconductor industries out of Lehman’s offices in both New York and San Francisco. Don received a B.A. in Chinese from UCLA and M.A.s in both East Asian Studies and Political Science from Stanford University.
Katharine Ku is Director of the Office of Technology Licensing (OTL) at Stanford University. OTL is responsible for the licensing of various state-of-the-art university technologies and industry sponsored research agreements and collaborations. Ku was Vice President, Business Development at Protein Design Labs, Inc. from 1990-1991. Prior to PDL, Ku was a researcher at Monsanto and Sigma Chemical, and taught chemistry. Ku is active in the Licensing Executive Society (LES), serving as Vice President, Western Region and Trustee of LES. She was President of the Association of University Technology Managers (AUTM) from 1988-90. She received the AUTM 2001 Bayh- Dole Award. Ku has a B.S. Chemical Engineering (Cornell University), and M.S. in Chem. Eng. (Washington University in St. Louis).
Miku Mehta is a Partner in Sughrue Mion, PLLC, one of the largest law firms practicing exclusively in the field of Intellectual Property Law. Miku’s area of focus includes technology fields such as computer software and hardware, networks. Internet-related applications, environmental technologies, optics, mechanical engineering, business processes and medical devices. His area of legal focus is the preparation and prosecution of patent applications before the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office. He also prepared opinions in the areas of patentability, validity, infringement and product clearance, as well as patent licensing. Mr. Mehta received his JD at George Mason University School of Law and his BS in Systems Engineering, Environmental
Sciences.
Michael Shpizner is Vice President and General Counsel of Fujitsu America, Inc. (FAI). FAI is a wholly-owned subsidiary of Fujitsu Limited, a global technology leader with annual revenues of $45 billion. Mr. Shpizner currently serves as an advisor to the Board of Directors of the San Francisco/Bay Area Chapter of the Association of Corporate Counsel (ACC), the global professional association for in-house counsel, and he is co-Chair of the Chapter’s Membership and Sponsorship Committees. Mr. Shpizner is a member of the General Counsel Committee of the Silicon Valley Campaign for Legal Services, a non-profit organization that generates and distributes funding to agencies that provide legal services to those most in need in our local community.
Mr. Shpizner has presented CLE programs on various topics, including managing multi-defendant litigation, alternative fee agreements, privacy law, and e-Commerce issues. Mr. Shpizner has appeared as a panelist at the Sedona Conference on Digital Privacy and Security and at the Practicing Law Institute’s Corporate Compliance Institute. Mr. Shpizner has developed and delivered a presentation entitled “Maxims of Corporate Success” for in-house counsel, and has published a series of articles on that subject in the ACC’s monthly journal, the Docket. Recently, Mr. Shpizner has presented at CLE seminars on the topics “Managing Client Costs: Making the Unpredictable — Predictable” and “Confronting NPEs: Emerging Solutions and New Strategies”; and “Patent Troll Jiu-Jitsu: Mastering the Gentle Art of NPE Defense.” Prior to joining Fujitsu in 1996, Mr. Shpizner was Corporate Counsel at Adaptec, Inc., and had practiced for approximately ten years at national law firms Proskauer Rose LLP; Heller, Ehrman, White & McAuliffe; and Fenwick & West. Mr. Shpizner received his J.D. from U.C.L.A.; he also holds an M. Ed. from the University of Massachusetts and a B.A. from Brown University. Mr. Shpizner’s personal interests include tennis, reading, hiking, chess, and re-living his college experience vicariously through his children, who attend Pitzer and Scripps.
Founded in 1990, the Keizai Society US-Japan Business Forum is an all- volunteer business and professional networking organization based in the San Francisco Bay Area. One of its primary purposes is to provide a venue for programs that showcase specialists with expertise on issues critical to the success of entrepreneurs and companies doing business with Japan and the U.S. Please visit www.keizai.org for more information.
Keizai Society’s theme for 2012 is “Japan in Transformation.” It encompasses commercial entrepreneurship and new venture formation as well as social entrepreneurship, new patterns of employment, corporate reform and many other critical priorities that are already breathing new life into Japan’s business community and its other institutions.
