- Participants
- Commenters/Moderators
- Co-Authors
Participants
Richard Epstein
James Parker Hall Distinguished Service Professor of Law, The University of Chicago
Peter and Kirstin Bedford Senior Fellow, The Hoover Institution
Richard A. Epstein is the James Parker Hall Distinguished Service Professor of Law at the University of Chicago, where he has taught since 1972. He has also been the Peter and Kirstin Bedford Senior Fellow at the Hoover Institution since 2000. Prior to joining the University of Chicago Law School faculty, he taught law at the University of Southern California from 1968 to 1972. He served as Interim Dean from February to June, 2001. He received an LL.D., h.c. from the University of Ghent, 2003. He has been a member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences since 1985 and a Senior Fellow of the Center for Clinical Medical Ethics at the University of Chicago Medical School, also since 1983. He served as editor of the Journal of Legal Studies from 1981 to 1991, and of the Journal of Law and Economics from 1991-2001. At present he is a director of the John M. Olin Program in Law and Economics. He has taught courses in civil procedure, communications, constitutional law, contracts, corporations, criminal law, health law and policy, legal history, labor law, property, real estate development and finance, jurisprudence, labor law; land use planning, patents, individual, estate and corporate taxation, Roman Law; torts, and workers' compensation. Among his recent publications is Antitrust Consent Decrees in Theory and Practice: Why Less is More (AEI 2007).
Education: A.B., 1964, Columbia College; B.A. (Juris.), 1966, Oxford University; LL.B., 1968, Yale University.
Scott Baker
Professor of Law, University of North Carolina School of Law
After beginning his legal training at George Mason University, Baker transferred to the University of Chicago. After law school and graduate school, Baker clerked for Judge E. Grady Jolly of the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals. Baker's research interests lie at the intersection of law, economics, and game theory. Baker's co-written work has appeared in the Journal of Law and Economics, the Journal of Law, Economics and Organization and the law reviews at Vanderbilt, Boston University, Florida State, and George Washington. A member of the California Bar, Baker joined the faculty at the University of North Carolina in 2002. He teaches law and economics, corporate finance, contracts, torts, property, and intellectual property.
Education: B.A., 1994, Miami University; J.D., 2000, University of Chicago; Ph.D., 2001, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.
Luigi A. Franzoni
Professor of Institutional Economics, University of Bologna
Luigi A. Franzoni is Professor of Institutional Economics at the Faculty of Economics, University of Bologna. Additionally he is the co-director of the European Doctorate in Law and Economics.
He received his D.Phil. in Economics from Nuffield College, Oxford. He has published on the economic theory of settlements, law enforcement and tax amnesties.
Franzoni is a member of both the Steering Committee of the Societa Italiana di Diritto ed Economia and the Editorial Board of the Review of Law and Economics.
His research interests also include intellectual property, law enforcement, torts, foundations of law and economics and incomplete contracts.
Education: Laurea in Economico e Commerico, 1989, University of Bologna; M.A., 1992, Warwick University; Dottorato in Finanza Pubblica, 1994, University of Pavia; Ph.D. in Economics, 1996, University of Oxford.
Damien Geradin
Professor of Competition Law and Economics, Tilburg University Law and Economics Center
Director of the Global Competition Law Center
Partner, Howrey, LLP
Damien Geradin is a Professor of Competition Law and Economics at Tilburg University (The Netherlands) and a member of TILEC. His areas of research include antitrust, network industries (telecommunications, postal services, energy and transport), and the interface between antitrust and IP. Damien is the Director of the Global Competition Law Center (GCLC), a think tank devoted to analytical research in the area of competition law, which is based at the College of Europe in Bruges (Belgium). He also held visiting Professorships in a number of leading US Universities including Columbia, Harvard, UCLA and Yale.
Geradin is also a partner in the Brussels office of the international law firm Howrey LLP. Howrey is a firm specialized in antitrust, IP, and litigation. He is the European editor of the Journal of Competition Law and Economics. He has published more than 65 legal and economic papers in a variety of academic journals. Damien Geradin's work has been quoted by the European Court of Justice, the US Court of Appeals (10th Circuit), as well as in numerous regulatory proceedings. Damien Geradin is the co-author of Controlling Market Power in Telecommunications: Antitrust vs. Sector-specific Regulation (Oxford University Press, 2003) with M. Kerf and Global Antitrust Law and Economics (Foundation Press, 2007) with E. Elhauge.
Education: Ph.D., 1995, Cambridge University; Fulbright research scholar, Yale Law School.
F. Scott Kieff
Professor, Washington University School of Law
Research Fellow, The Hoover Institution
F. Scott Kieff is a Law Professor at Washington University in St. Louis and a Research Fellow at Stanford’s Hoover Institution, where he directs the Hoover Project on Commercializing Innovation, which studies the law, economics, and politics of innovation, including entrepreneurship, corporate governance, banking, finance, economic development, intellectual property, antitrust, and bankruptcy. He also serves as a faculty member of the Munich Intellectual Property Law Center in Germany and previously has been a visiting professor in the law schools at Northwestern, Chicago, and Stanford, as well as a faculty fellow in the Olin Program on Law and Economics at Harvard. His law school courses include contracts, patents, intellectual property, contracts and intellectual property, commercializing intellectual property, law and economics of patents, and biotechnology; and he co-authored a leading casebook and treatise, Principles of Patent Law, by Foundation Press, now in its third edition. Before attending law school at the University of Pennsylvania, he studied molecular biology and microeconomics at MIT and conducted research in molecular genetics at the Whitehead Institute for Biomedical Research. Having practiced law for over six years as a trial lawyer and patent lawyer for Pennie & Edmonds in New York and Jenner & Block Chicago and as law clerk to U.S. Circuit Judge Giles S. Rich, he regularly serves as a testifying and consulting expert, mediator, and arbitrator to law firms, businesses, government agencies and courts. Through November of 2007 he served for the first two years of the Federal Circuit’s Appellate Mediation Panel and in December of 2007 he was appointed by United States Secretary of Commerce Carlos M. Gutierrez to serve for a three year term on the nine-person Patent Public Advisory Committee of the United States Patent and Trademark Office, which was created by Congress in 1999 to advise the Under Secretary of Commerce for Intellectual Property and Director of the United States Patent and Trademark Office on matters relating to the policies, goals, performance, budget, and user fees of the patent operation.
Education: BS, 1991, Massachusetts Institute of Technology; JD, 1994, University of Pennsylvania.
Bruce Kobayashi
Professor of Law, George Mason University
Professor of Law Bruce H. Kobayashi’s background in economics makes him a vital part of the law and economics focus at George Mason. Since coming to George Mason in 1992, he has been a frequent contributor to economics and law and economics journals. He previously served as a senior economist with the Federal Trade Commission, a senior research associate with the U.S. Sentencing Commission, and an economist with the U.S. Department of Justice.
Professor Kobayashi was educated at the University of California, Los Angeles, earning his B.S. in Economics and System Science (1981), and his M.A. (1982) and Ph.D. (1986) in Economics.
He teaches Litigation and Dispute Resolution Theory, Quantitative Forensics, and Legal and Economic Theory of Intellectual Property.
Education: B.S., 1981, M.A, 1982, and Ph.D., 1986, University of California, Los Angeles.
Michael Meurer
Michaels Faculty Research Scholar and Professor of Law, Boston University School of Law
The son of an economics professor, Michael Meurer knew by the time he was 13 that he, too, wanted to teach at the university level. An S.B., J.D. and Ph.D. later, he became an economics professor at Duke University and later a law professor at the University of Buffalo. He came to Boston University School of Law in 1999, where he has taught courses in patents, intellectual property and public policy toward the high-tech industry.
Professor Meurer has received several grants and fellowships, including two grants from the Pew Charitable Trust, a Ford Foundation grant, an Olin Faculty Fellowship at Yale Law School and a postdoctoral fellowship at AT&T Bell Labs. He has served as an expert witness for the Federal Trade Commission on a merger case presenting issues related to patent licensing. He also has consulted with government officials from developing countries about antitrust law, and taught short courses in American intellectual property law at the law faculties of the University of Victoria and the National University of Singapore.
Education: S.B. in Economics and Interdisciplinary Science, Massachusetts Institute of Technology; J.D., cum laude, University of Minnesota; Ph.D. in Economics, University of Minnesota.
Adam Mossoff
Visiting Professor of Law, Washington & Lee University School of Law
Associate Professor of Law, Michigan State University College of Law
Adam Mossoff researches and writes in patent law and property theory.
His work addresses the theoretical and doctrinal intersections between property and intellectual property, with his recent articles focusing on the intellectual history of patents. Before joining the faculty at Michigan State, Professor Mossoff was a John M. Olin Fellow in Law at Northwestern University School of Law, and he clerked for the Hon.
Jacques L. Wiener, Jr., of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit. At MSU College of Law, he teaches Patent Law, Property, Cyberlaw, Jurisprudence, Estates & Trusts and a Property Theory Seminar.
Professor Mossoff graduated from the University of Chicago Law School with honors in 2001. He has a M.A. in philosophy from Columbia University, where he specialized in legal and political philosophy, and a B.A. in philosophy from the University of Michigan, where he graduated magna cum laude and with high honors in philosophy.
Education: B.A., 1993, University of Michigan; M.A., 1998, Columbia University; J.D., 2001, University of Chicago.
J. Greg Sidak
Founder, Criterion Economics, L.L.C.
J. Gregory Sidak is the founder of Criterion Economics, L.L.C., an economic consulting firm in Washington, D.C., the founder and president of the International Institute for Competition Law and Economics, which promotes research on competition law, intellectual property, and regulation of industry, and the founding U.S. editor of the Journal of Competition Law & Economics, an international peer-reviewed journal published by the Oxford University Press. His work concerns antitrust policy in high-technology industries, intellectual property, the regulation of network industries, and constitutional issues regarding economic regulation.
Mr. Sidak was Deputy General Counsel of the Federal Communications Commission from 1987 to 1989, and Senior Counsel and Economist to the Council of Economic Advisers in the Executive Office of the President from 1986 to 1987. As an attorney in private practice with Covington & Burling in Washington, D.C., he worked on numerous antitrust cases and federal administrative, legislative, and appellate matters concerning telecommunications and other regulated industries. From 1992 through 2005, he was a resident scholar at the American Enterprise Institute for Public Policy Research (AEI), where he directed AEI’s Studies in Telecommunications Deregulation and held the F.K. Weyerhaeuser Chair in Law and Economics. From 1993 to 1999, Mr. Sidak was a Senior Lecturer at the Yale School of Management, where he taught a course on telecommunications regulation with Dean Paul W. MacAvoy. From 2005 to 2007, Mr. Sidak was a Visiting Professor of Law at Georgetown University Law Center, where he taught courses on antitrust law and telecommunications regulation.
Mr. Sidak has written numerous books and published approximately eighty scholarly articles in journals and other business periodicals. He is ranked eighth among legal authors on the Social Science Research Network (SSRN), from which his scholarly papers have been downloaded more than 35,000 times
Mr. Sidak has testified before committees of the U.S. Senate and House of Representatives on regulatory and constitutional law matters, and before the Federal Trade Commission and the Antitrust Division of the U.S. Department of Justice on antitrust and intellectual property matters. His writings on antitrust, regulation, and constitutional law have been cited by the Supreme Court of the United States, the lower federal and state supreme courts, state and federal regulatory commissions, the Supreme Court of Canada, and the European Commission. He was a member of the Stanford Law Review. Following law school, he served as Judge Richard A. Posner’s first law clerk on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit.
Education: A.B, 1977; A.M., 1981; J.D., 1981; Stanford University.
Henry E. Smith
Fred A. Johnston Professor of Property and Environmental Law, Yale Law School
Austin Wakeman Scott Visiting Professor of Law, Harvard Law School
Henry E. Smith is the Fred A. Johnston Professor of Property and Enivronmental Law at Yale Law School, where he teaches in the areas of property, intellectual property, natural resources, and taxation. After law school he clerked for the Hon. Ralph K. Winter, United States Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit, and has taught at the Northwestern University School of Law. He has also been a visiting professor at the University of Chicago Law School, and was the William K. Jacobs, Jr. Visiting Professor of Law at Harvard Law School in the spring of 2006. In 2003 he was awarded a Berlin Prize Fellowship by the American Academy in Berlin. Professor Smith has written primarily on the law and economics of property and intellectual property, including Intellectual Property as Property: Delineating Entitlements in Information, Self-Help and the Nature of Property, Exclusion and Property Rules in the Law of Nuisance, and The Language of Property: Form, Context, and Audience. He holds an A.B. from Harvard, a Ph.D. in Linguistics from Stanford, and a J.D. from Yale.
Education: A.B., 1986, Harvard; A.M., 1987, Stanford; Ph.D., 1992, Stanford; J.D., 1996, Yale.
David Teece
Thomas W. Tusher Chair in Global Business and Director, Institute of Management, Innovation, and Organization, Haas Business and Public Policy Group, University of California, Berkeley
Vice Chairman, LECG
Professor David J. Teece is an authority on matters of technological change and organizational structure, particularly as it relates to competition policy and intellectual property. He is the Mitsubishi Bank professor at the University of California, Berkeley, where he also directs the Institute of Management, Innovation and Organization. Dr. Teece has a Ph.D. in economics from the University of Pennsylvania and has held teaching and research positions at Stanford University and Oxford University. He also has received three honorary doctorates. Dr. Teece has testified before Congress on regulatory policy and competition policy, is author of over 200 books and articles, and is the editor of "Industrial & Corporate Change" (Oxford University Press). According to Science Watch (November/December 2005) he is the lead author on the most cited article in economics and business worldwide, 1995–2005. He is also one of the top 10 cited scholars for the decade, and has been recognized by Accenture as one of the world’s top 50 business intellectuals. Dr. Teece has also testified before judges, juries, arbitrators, and tribunals in the US and abroad, both on liability and complex valuation and damage issues. He has been chairman of LECG since 1988. He is also a director of the Atlas Family of Mutual Funds.
Education: BA, 1970, M.Comm., 1971, University of Canterbury: M.A., 1973, University of Pennsylvania; Ph.D., 1975, Economics, University of Pennsylvania.
Commenters/Moderators:
Robert A. Armitage
Senior Vice President and General Counsel, Eli Lilly and Company
Robert A. Armitage became senior vice president and general counsel for Eli Lilly and Company in January 2003, and is a member of the company's executive committee. He joined the company as vice president and general patent counsel, Lilly Research Laboratories, in October 1999.
Armitage was born in Port Huron, Mich., and received a bachelor of arts degree in physics and mathematics in 1970 from Albion College. He received a master's degree in physics from the University of Michigan in 1971 and a juris doctor from the University of Michigan Law School in 1973. Prior to joining Lilly, Armitage was chief intellectual property counsel for The Upjohn Company from 1983 to 1993. He also was a partner in the Washington, D.C., office of Vinson & Elkins LLP from 1993 to 1999.
Armitage is a member and a past president of the American Intellectual Property Law Association (AIPLA) and the Association of Corporate Patent Counsel (ACPC). He is also a past chair of the Patent Committee of the Pharmaceutical Research and Manufacturers of America (PhRMA), the National Council of Intellectual Property Law Associations (NCIPLA), the Intellectual Property Committee of the National Association of Manufacturers (NAM), the Fellows of the American Intellectual Property Law Association, and the Intellectual Property Law Section of the State Bar of Michigan.
He has served as an adjunct professor of law at George Washington University, as a member of the board of directors of Human Genome Sciences, Inc., and as president of the board of directors of the Hospice of Southwest Michigan, Inc. He has also served as a member of the board of directors of both Intellectual Property Owners (IPO) and the National Inventors Hall of Fame Foundation (NIHFF). He is currently serving as a member of the Council for the Intellectual Property Law Section of the American Bar Association (ABA IPL Section), a member of the Board of Directors of the Indianapolis Symphony Orchestra, a member of the Greater Indianapolis Progress Committee and the Indianapolis Race Relations Leadership Network, and a trustee on the Albion College Board of Trustees.
Education: B.A., 1970, Albion College; M.S., 1971, University of Michigan; J.D., 1973, University of Michigan Law School.
Michael Carrier
Professor, Rutgers University School of Law
Michael Carrier teaches and writes in the areas of antitrust, intellectual property, and property law. His work has appeared in the Stanford Law Review, University of Pennsylvania Law Review, Duke Law Journal, Vanderbilt Law Review, Minnesota Law Review, Iowa Law Review (forthcoming), and Yale Law Journal Pocket Part. His book, "Innovation for the 21st Century: Harnessing the Power of Intellectual Property and Antitrust Law," will be published by Oxford University Press in 2009.
Professor Carrier is a summa cum laude graduate of Yale University and a cum laude graduate of Michigan Law School, where he was Book Review Editor of the law review. For four years, he litigated antitrust, civil, intellectual property, and sports cases at Covington & Burling, in Washington, D.C. He also clerked for the Honorable John D. Butzner, Jr. on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit.
George Cary
Partner, Cleary Gottlieb Steen & Hamilton LLP
George Cary is a partner in the Washington, DC office of Cleary Gottlieb Steen & Hamilton LLP. His practice involves antitrust counseling and litigation. Before joining the firm, Mr. Cary served as Deputy Director of the United States Federal Trade Commissions Bureau of Competition, responsible for merger enforcement. Prior to that, Mr. Cary was an antitrust and litigation partner at the Los Angeles firm of Irell & Manella.
Since joining Cleary Gottlieb, Mr. Cary has represented companies in many industry-transforming mergers and acquisitions. While serving as Deputy Director of the FTC’s Bureau of Competition, Mr. Cary oversaw a record number of merger transactions. In 1997, he was the recipient of the Brandeis Award given to the outstanding litigator at the Federal Trade Commission. Additionally, Mr. Cary was a principal author of the 1997 modification of the 1992 Federal Horizontal Merger Guidelines, which incorporated consideration of efficiencies in merger assessment.
Mr. Cary maintains a diverse antitrust litigation docket, with emphasis on the application of antitrust to intellectual property and high technology markets. Mr. Cary has served as chair of the Government Antitrust Litigation Committee of the American Bar Associations Antitrust Section. Mr. Cary served two terms on the California Judicial Nominees Evaluation Commission. He also served two terms on the State Bars Federal Courts Committee.
Education: A.B., 1973, University of California- Santa Cruz; J.D., 1976, University of California-Berkeley.
Eric R. Claeys
Associate Professor of Law
George Mason University School of Law
Eric Claeys is Associate Professor of Law at the School of Law at George Mason University. He has also taught at Saint Louis University School of Law and the University of Chicago Law School. Before teaching, he practiced appellate and tort litigation and clerked for the Hon. Melvin Brunetti, United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit, and the Hon. William Rehnquist, Chief Justice of the United States.
Professor Claeys' scholarship focuses on American property and constitutional law, and particularly on the influence of American natural-law/natural-rights theory on the law.
Education: A.B., 1989, Princeton University; J.D., 1994, University of Southern California.
Chuck Fish
Former Chief Patent Counsel, Time Warner Inc.
Chuck Fish is a 1984 graduate of the U.S. Naval Academy and received a JD from Wayne State University (cum laude) in 1992. He served on active duty in the Navy on a Destroyer home ported in Yokosuka, Japan and on the staff of Patrol Wing One in Kami Seya, Japan. As a patent lawyer he has worked at Morgan Finnegan, Sony, General Instrument Corp., Motorola Inc. and, most recently, was Chief Patent Counsel of Time Warner Inc. He is currently Special Counsel with the John McCain 2008 Legal Team. He is not yet sure what he wants to be when he grows up.
Education: BS, 1984, United States Naval Academy; JD, 1992, Wayne State University Law School.
John Golden
Assistant Professor, University of Texas School of Law
Dr. Golden joined the UT Law faculty from Wilmer Cutler Pickering Hale and Dorr LLP in Boston where he worked as an associate in the intellectual property department primarily on patent litigation from 2001 to 2002 and 2003 to 2006. He has practiced at the trial and appellate levels and has participated in the prosecution of patent applications before the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office. Golden was also the Hieken Lecturer on Law at Harvard Law School where he taught a class on patent law in 2004 and 2005.
In addition to working in private practice, Golden served as a law clerk for U.S. Supreme Court Associate Justice Stephen Breyer in Washington, D.C. from 2002 to 2003. Golden also clerked for the Honorable Michael Boudin of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the First Circuit from 2000 to 2001.
Golden holds a law degree from Harvard Law School where he graduated magna cum laude in 2000, and a Ph.D. in physics from Harvard University in 1997. He graduated summa cum laude in physics and history in 1992 from Harvard College.
Golden has written or co-written numerous legal and physics articles including "Biotechnology, Technology Policy and Patentability: Natural Products and Invention in the American System," 50 Emory L.J 101 (2001); "Coulomb Blockade of Strongly Coupled Quantum Dots Studied via Bosonization of a Channel with a Finite Barrier," 65 Phys. Rev. B 115326 (2002); and "'Patent Trolls' and Patent Remedies," 85 Tex. L. Rev. 2111 (2007) (Commentary for Symposium: Frontiers of Intellectual Property).
Education: A.B., 1992; J.D., 2000; Ph.D., 1997.
Roy Hoffinger
Vice President and Legal Counsel, Qualcomm
Roy Hoffinger has practiced commercial litigation since 1982, when he graduated from the University of Chicago School of Law after serving as an editor of the Law Review. He was associated with Cravath, Swaine & Moore, and Gibson Dunn & Crutcher until 1988. He then joined the legal department of AT&T Corp, where he served as AT&T's chief federal regulatory and antitrust attorney, and led the company's efforts to secure favorable regulatory treatment under the landmark Telecommunications Act of 1996. Mr. Hoffinger joined Qwest Corporation in January 2001 as Vice President, Chief Counsel, Federal and State Regulation, supervising 30 in-house attorneys in addition to outside counsel. In January 2003, he returned to private practice as a partner with Perkins Coie, and became a member of that firm's commercial litigation, appellate and regulatory practice groups. Mr. Hoffinger joined Holme, Roberts & Owen in January of 2006, where he specialized in antitrust, telecommunications regulation and other complex commercial litigation matters, including appeals.
Qualcomm recently appointed Roy Hoffinger as Vice President and legal counsel.
Geoffrey Manne
Academic Relations Manager for Law & Economics
Microsoft
Assistant Professor of Law
Lewis & Clark Law School
Professor Manne manages academic outreach in law and economics for Microsoft. His primary responsibilities include grant-making for academic research on the law and economics of intellectual property, competition policy, and other aspects of the information economy; and coordinating the multifaceted interactions between Microsoft (and its legal affairs department in particular) and outside scholars working in areas relevant to Microsoft’s policy, business and legal strategies.
Prior to joining Microsoft and the Lewis & Clark Law School, Professor Manne practiced law at Latham & Watkins, LLP in Washington, DC, where he specialized in antitrust litigation and counseling. He also practiced in the areas of bankruptcy and commercial litigation and did some appellate work. Before private practice Manne was a Bigelow Fellow at the University of Chicago Law School, an Olin Fellow at the University of Virginia School of Law and a law clerk to Judge Morris S. Arnold of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Eighth Circuit.
During law school Manne was a research assistant to Judge Richard Posner, Comment Editor of the University of Chicago Law School Roundtable and a Staff Member of the University of Chicago Legal Forum. Among his other vocational pursuits was a brief stint at the U.S. Federal Trade Commission.
Professor Manne's research has focused broadly on the economic implications of legal constraints on business organizations, particularly in the contexts of antitrust, nonprofit organizations and international law. Manne is a member of the Virginia and District of Columbia bars, as well as the Bar of the U.S. Bankruptcy Court for the Eastern District of Virginia. He is also a member of the American and the Canadian Law and Economics Associations.
His most recent scholarship is available and he blogs at Truth on the Market.
Education: A.B., 1993, University of Chicago; J.D., 1997, University of Chicago.
Jason Mendelson
Managing Director, Foundry Group
Jason has over a decade of experience in the venture capital and technology industries in a multitude of investing, operational and engineering roles. Prior to co-founding Foundry Group, Jason was a Managing Director and General Counsel for Mobius Venture Capital, where he also acted as its chief administrative partner overseeing all operations of the firm.
He currently serves on the board of directors of Oblong for Foundry Group.
While at Mobius Venture Capital, Jason was actively involved in serving on boards of portfolio companies and the negotiations and structuring of all financings, mergers and exits in the portfolio. He has also gained valuable experience as a restructuring expert during the challenging "Internet bubble" time period.
Prior to his involvement with Mobius Venture Capital, Jason was an attorney with Cooley Godward Kronish LLP, where he practiced corporate and securities law with an emphasis on representation of emerging companies in private and public financings, mergers and acquisitions. As an attorney, Jason has consummated over $2 billion of venture capital investments, $5 billion in mergers and has extensive experience in fund formation, employment law and general litigation, serving as an expert witness in these related fields.
Before his legal career, Jason was a senior consultant and software engineer at Accenture where he focused on financial institution re-engineering engagements. While at Accenture, Jason supervised programming teams up to forty people in size and was responsible for managing deliverables in multi-billion dollar engagements.
As one of the first full-time, in-house general counsels at a venture capital firm, Jason has been on the forefront of thought leadership and has co-chaired the National Venture Capital Association's General Counsel group and is an active participant on the NVCA's Chief Financial Officer group. He was one of the key draftspersons for the NVCA model document task force which created the industry's first set of standardized venture capital financing documents, which has greatly aided in the efficiency of completing these types of deals.
Notable companies that Jason has worked with, represented and / or sat on the boards of include Accelergy, eCast, Reactrix, Stratify (acq. IRM), and Vitria (VITR).
Jason holds a Bachelor of Arts degree in Economics, with distinction and a Juris Doctorate, cum laude, from the University of Michigan. He is an active musician playing drums and bass guitar in several bands (including Soul Patch with his partner Ryan McIntyre) and enjoys home remodeling and travel. Jason blogs about his experiences in the venture industry at www.askthevc.com.
Education: B.A., J.D., University of Michigan.
Scott Stern
Associate Professor, Kellogg School of Management, Northwestern University
Professor Stern was raised in Hauppauge, NY, and graduated with a BA degree in Economics from New York University. After working for a consulting company in New York, Stern attended Stanford University and received his PhD in Economics in 1996. From 1995-2001, Stern was Assistant Professor of Management at the Sloan School at MIT, and, from 2001-2003, Stern was a Non-Resident Senior Fellow of the Brookings Institution. Stern is an Associate Professor in the Kellogg School of Management at Northwestern University, and a Research Associate of the National Bureau of Economic Research. He is also a co-organizer of the Innovation Policy and the Economy Program at the National Bureau of Economic Research, and the Academic Director of the Kellogg Biotechnology Program. He is also an Associate Editor of Management Science, the International Journal of Industrial Organization, and the Journal of Business and Economic Statistics, a Contributing Editor to the Antitrust Law Journal, and serves on the Board of Management of the International Schumpeter Society. In 2005, Stern was awarded the first Ewing Marion Kauffman Prize Medal for Distinguished Research in Entrepreneurship.
Stern explores how innovation - the production and distribution of "ideas" - differs from more traditional economic goods, and the implications of these differences for business and public policy. Often focusing on the pharmaceutical and biotechnology industries, this research is at the intersection between industrial organization and the economics of technical change. Recent studies examine the determinants of R&D productivity, the role of incentives and organizational design on the process of innovation, and the drivers of commercialization strategy for technology entrepreneurs. A key conclusion from this research is that, particularly for start-up innovators, the ability to translate "ideas" into competitive advantage depends on subtle elements of the firm's microeconomic and competitive environment. Effective management of innovation depends on the integration between the firm's commercialization strategy, research organization, and technology development choices.
Education: B.A., 1990, New York University; Ph.D. 1996, Stanford University.
Richard Wilder
Associate General Counsel for Intellectual Property Policy, Microsoft Corporation
Mr. Wilder is Associate General Counsel for Intellectual Property Policy at Microsoft Corporation. In that capacity he has the responsibility for defining and driving company-wide policy in all areas of intellectual property. He was previously a partner in a global law firm specializing in international law. Mr. Wilder is a former director of the Global Intellectual Property Issues Division of the World Intellectual Property Organization, a specialized agency of the United Nations in Geneva. While there he had responsibility for diverse issues including public health and human rights. Following his return to private practice, he continued work in intellectual property, with a particular emphasis on transactions in the life sciences. He has focused, in particular, in the field of public health—including on access to existing medicines and the development of new ones, with particular focus on developing country needs. In this connection, he has advised the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis, and Malaria; the World Health Organization; the Medicines for Malaria Venture; the Global Alliance for TB Drug Development; the U.S. Agency for International Development; and the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation.
Mr. Wilder has taught law (including at the University of Malaya, Malaysia) and speaks and writes often on international law and intellectual property law. Mr. Wilder has an engineering degree from the University of Washington, and practiced as a power generation engineer for several years, primarily in the developing world. He has a law degree from the Franklin Pierce Law Center.
Josh Wright
Associate Professor of Law, George Mason University School of Law
Joshua D. Wright is an Assistant Professor of Law at George Mason University School of Law. Professor Wright was also appointed to the newly created position of Scholar in Residence at the Federal Trade Commission Bureau of Competition, where he will serve while on leave from George Mason in the 2007-08 academic year. Professor Wright is a graduate of the UCLA School of Law, where he was a managing editor of the UCLA Law Review. He also holds M.A. and Ph.D. degrees in Economics from UCLA. Professor Wright served as a law clerk to the Honorable James V. Selna, United States District Court, Central District of California.
Professor Wright's research focuses on the law and economics of the competitive process for product distribution, including slotting allowances, category management, exclusive dealing, payola, and other marketing relationships. Professor Wright's teaching interests include Antitrust, Contracts, Law and Economics, and Quantitative Methods. He has taught courses in law and economics at Pepperdine University Graduate School of Public Policy and UCLA.
Professor Wright is a regular contributor to Truth on the Market, a weblog dedicated to academic commentary on law, business, and economics.
Education: B.A., 1998, University of California-San Diego; M.A., 2001, University of California-Los Angeles; J.D., 2002, UCLA; Ph.D., 2003, UCLA.
Co-Authors
John M. Conley
William Rand Kenan Jr. Professor of Law
University of North Carolina School of Law
After serving as a scuba diver with the New England Aquarium in Boston, Massachusetts, Conley received his J.D. (1977) and a Ph.D. in anthropology (1980) from Duke University. He was editor in chief of the Duke Law Journal and was elected to The Order of the Coif. He practiced law in Boston and in Charlotte, North Carolina for six years, specializing in civil litigation. He also served as an adjunct professor at Boston College Law School. Since joining the UNC-Chapel Hill faculty in 1983, his principal research and teaching interests have been in law and social science, and intellectual property law.
Professor Conley will be discussing his paper entitled "Rethinking the Product of Nature Doctrine as a Barrier to Biotechnology Patents" at "Who Owns Your Body? Legal and Social Issues in Michael Crichton's NEXT." The Chicago-Kent Law School will be hosting the conference on May 21, 2007.
Education: B.A., 1971, Harvard University; J.D., 1977, Duke University; Ph.D., 1980, Duke University.
Vincenzo Denicolò
Vincenzo Denicolò is Professor of Economics at the University of Bologna. He was Visiting Fellow at the University of Cambridge (1996-97) and Visiting Professor at the European University Institute (1998). His main fields of research are the theory of social choice and the theory of industrial organization.
He has published extensively in respected economic journals, including the Quarterly Journal of Economics, the Journal of Economic Theory and the RAND Journal of Economics.
Arvind Malhotra
Thomas V. and Janet R. Lewis Scholar and Associate Professor of Entrepreneurship
University of North Carolina Kenan-Flagler Business School
IT-based innovation, knowledge management, virtual teams, inter-organizational information sharing and strategic use of information technology are areas of expertise of entrepreneurship professor Arvind Malhotra.
His research projects include studying successful innovative organizational and inter-organizational structures; adoption of innovative technologies, such as wireless, by consumers and organizations; and knowledge sharing in supply chains.
Dr. Malhotra has received research grants from the Society for Information Managers Advanced Practices Council, Dell, Carnegie-Bosche Institute, National Science Foundation, RosettaNet consortium, UNC-Small Grants Program and the Marketing Sciences Institute.
He has consulted, conducted applied research projects or led executive development workshops with Sprint, Exxon Mobil, RosettaNet Consortium, American Golf Corporation, Cisco, IBM, ING Direct and Cargill Sweeteners.
His papers have been published in leading academic journals such as Harvard Business Review, MIS Quarterly, Manufacturing and Service Operations Management, Journal of Management Information Systems, Journal of Knowledge Management and Communications of the ACM. He received the best paper award from MIS Quarterly, the top information science journal, in 2001. Two of his papers have earned the prestigious Society for Information Managers Best Paper Award.
He received his PhD in business administration and his MS in industrial and systems engineering from the University of Southern California. He earned his BE in electronics and communications engineering from the University of Delhi.
