Partner, Gibson, Dunn & Crutcher, LLP
Svetlana S. Gans is a partner in the Washington, D.C. office of Gibson, Dunn & Crutcher, LLP where she helps clients navigate complex consumer protection, privacy, and competition related regulatory proceedings before the U.S. Federal Trade Commission (FTC), , U.S. Department of Justice Antitrust Division, State Attorneys General and other enforcement bodies. Ms. Gans also assists on litigation matters and provides strategic counseling and advice related to public policy issues.
Before joining Gibson Dunn, she served as the Vice President & Associate General Counsel at NCTA, the Internet & Television Association, where she helped lead the association’s consumer protection and competition policy work. Prior to joining NCTA, Ms. Gans served with distinction as Chief of Staff to Acting Chairman Maureen K. Ohlhausen at the FTC. As the agency chief of staff, Ms. Gans managed and oversaw agency operations, including bureau and office heads reporting to the Chairman, a seven-member office staff, and an agency budget of over $300 million. She also served as the Acting Chairman’s key advisor on consumer protection and competition investigations and litigation, working with a diverse team of attorneys and economists to preserve competition and protect U.S. consumers. She created, executed, and oversaw several strategic initiatives for the agency, including the agency process reform, regulatory reform, and data security transparency initiatives. Previously, Ms. Gans had the unique experience of serving in both litigating bureaus of the FTC: the Bureau of Competition and the Bureau of Consumer Protection.
Prior to her time in government, Ms. Gans worked as an antitrust associate at major law firms. Her practice focused on defending consumer product, financial services, and trade association clients in regulatory and private investigations alleging conspiracy and violations of antitrust and consumer protection laws.
Ms. Gans has been an active leader in the ABA Antitrust Law Section (“Section”) for two decades, and currently serves as the Section’s Marketing Officer. Ms. Gans helped create the Section’s Young Lawyer Representative Program, now in its 10th year, and the Section’s Law Ambassador Program, each aimed at developing and promoting the next generation of consumer protection and competition attorneys. Ms. Gans is also active in the Federal Communications Bar Association, currently serving as Co-Chair of the Diversity Pipeline Initiative and the Women’s Leadership Committee.
Ms. Gans received her law degree with high honors from the University of Denver College of Law. During law school, Ms. Gans served as a Judicial Intern to the Honorable John L. Kane, Jr. and as an Honors Program Paralegal for the United States Department of Justice Antitrust Division, Merger Taskforce. Ms. Gans earned her undergraduate degree cum laude from Boston University.
Managing Partner, Wilkinson Barker Knauer LLP
Bryan Tramont, the firm’s managing partner, offers strategic counsel to Fortune 100 companies and trade associations, as well as small and mid-sized telecommunications and media companies, on all aspects of communications law and regulation. He is regularly called on to advise companies as they develop and evaluate new business opportunities in the technology, media, and telecommunications sectors. Mr. Tramont also designs and leads the execution of the firm’s strategic plan and directs client management and development. Mr. Tramont has been recognized by leading publications like Legal 500, Chambers USA, and Washingtonian as one of the nation’s top communications lawyers. In 2017, he was named to the inaugural Legal 500 Hall of Fame List, which highlights individuals who have received constant praise by their clients and who have been recognized by the Legal 500 as an elite leading lawyer for six consecutive years. He has been awarded The Best Lawyers in America © 2017 “Lawyer of the Year” for Media Law and “Lawyer of the Year" in Communications Law in 2016. In 2016, he was also named one of the Top 10 Washington, DC Super Lawyers.
Mr. Tramont serves on the Commerce Spectrum Management Advisory Committee (CSMAC), advising the Assistant Secretary of Commerce for Communications and Information at NTIA. Appointed under the Bush and Obama Administrations, he also served as the committee’s Co-Chairman from 2008-2010. In addition, Mr. Tramont is active in the Federal Communications Bar Association, where he served in a variety of leadership roles, including as President from 2010-11 and has been awarded the organization’s Distinguished Service Award. Mr. Tramont chairs the Federalist Society’s Telecommunications Practice Group Executive Committee, serves on the International Institute of Communications Canada Board of Directors, and previously served on the Governing Committee of the ABA Forum on Communications Law. Mr. Tramont currently is an adjunct law professor at The Catholic University of America as part of the Communications Law Institute, is a senior adjunct fellow at the University of Colorado, Boulder, has served as the Syracuse University Law School’s Practitioner in Residence, and is on the Board of Trustees at William Woods University. Mr. Tramont is the author of numerous articles on communications policy and is a frequent speaker and lecturer at academic and industry events. Prior to joining Wilkinson Barker Knauer, Mr. Tramont served as Chief of Staff of the Federal Communications Commission under Chairman Michael Powell. As Chief of Staff, Mr. Tramont managed all aspects of the agency’s operations and directed FCC staff in implementing all components of the agency’s policy portfolio including media, broadband, mobility, and traditional telephone services. Before being elevated to Chief of Staff, Mr. Tramont was Chairman Powell’s Senior Legal Advisor, advising him on strategic policy matters and on wireless, international, technology, satellite, and consumer issues. Mr. Tramont also served as Senior Legal Advisor to Commissioner Kathleen Abernathy and, before that, to Commissioner Harold Furchtgott-Roth. He also served as a law clerk for the Honorable Duane Benton on the Supreme Court for his home state of Missouri. In addition, Mr. Tramont has served as an expert witness in a number of communications-related litigation matters.
Bryan Tramont graduated summa cum laude from The George Washington University with a degree in political science. He earned his law degree from Yale Law School, where he served as editor of the Yale Law & Policy Review.
Senior Advisor, Freshfields
Christine is a senior advisor in our antitrust, competition and trade practice with more than 25 years of public and private sector experience at the intersection of law, policy and politics. Based in Washington, DC, she counsels senior executives and boards of directors on how to navigate complex and evolving legal and regulatory regimes to achieve their desired business goals.
Most recently, Christine served as a Commissioner at the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) where she helped shape policies and enforcement actions in the fields of antitrust, consumer privacy and data security and consumer protection. During her tenure, she also testified before the US Congress on several occasions and represented the FTC in bilateral and multilateral discussions abroad.
Before joining the FTC, Christine was a Senior Vice President at Delta Air Lines where she oversaw the carrier’s regulatory and international legal matters. Prior to moving in-house, she was a partner at two international law firms where she worked with clients to achieve regulatory clearance for multi-jurisdictional mergers and to defend businesses in high-stakes investigations.
Her broad sector experience ranges from aircraft and automobiles to veterinary services, video games and virtual reality. She has worked extensively in the highly regulated fields of airlines, healthcare and pharmaceuticals.
After leaving the FTC last year, Christine founded an organization to provide safe housing and comprehensive support services to survivors of human trafficking and sexual exploitation. Freshfields provided pro bono services to the organization including corporate formation. She will continue supporting this organization alongside client practice.
Senior Analyst, Futurum Research
Olivier Blanchard has extensive experience managing product innovation, technology adoption, digital integration, and change management for industry leaders in the B2B, B2C, B2G sectors, and the IT channel. His passion is helping decision-makers and their organizations understand the many risks and opportunities of technology-driven disruption, and leverage innovation to build stronger, better, more competitive companies. A trusted source of analysis and insights on digital business and digital innovation, Olivier also travels the globe speaking about business technology, Disruption as a Model (DaaM), and the impact of innovation on markets and culture. He is also the best-selling author of Social Media RIO: Managing and Measuring Social Media Efforts in Your Organization, and co-author of Building Dragons: Digital Transformation in the Experience Economy. Blanchard is based in Greenville, South Carolina.
President and Founder, International Center for Law & Economics
Geoffrey A. Manne is the president and founder of the International Center for Law and Economics (ICLE), a nonprofit, nonpartisan research center based in Portland, Oregon. He is also a distinguished fellow at Northwestern Law School’s Searle Center on Law, Regulation, & Economic Growth. In April 2017 he was appointed by FCC Chairman Ajit Pai to the FCC’s Broadband Deployment Advisory Committee, and he recently served for two years on the FCC’s Consumer Advisory Committee.
Mr. Manne earned his JD and AB degrees from the University of Chicago and is an expert in the economic analysis of law, specializing in competition, telecommunications, consumer protection, intellectual property, and technology policy.
Prior to founding ICLE, Manne was a law professor at Lewis & Clark Law School. From 2006-2009, he took a leave from teaching to develop Microsoft’s law and economics academic outreach program. Manne has also served as a lecturer in law at the University of Chicago Law School and the University of Virginia School of Law. He practiced antitrust law and appellate litigation at Latham & Watkins, clerked for Hon. Morris S. Arnold on the 8th Circuit Court of Appeals, and worked as a research assistant for Judge Richard Posner. He was also once (very briefly) employed by the FTC.
Mr. Manne’s publications have appeared in numerous journals including the Journal of Competition Law and Economics, the Harvard Journal of Law and Technology, the Supreme Court Economic Review, and the Arizona Law Review, among others. With former FTC Commissioner, Joshua Wright, Manne is the editor of a volume from Cambridge University Press entitled, Competition Policy and Intellectual Property Law Under Uncertainty: Regulating Innovation. Manne has also testified on several occasions before Congress and at the FCC and FTC, and he regularly files written comments and amicus briefs on key antitrust, IP, and telecommunications issues. His analysis is frequently published in popular print and broadcasting outlets such as the Wall Street Journal, Wired, Foreign Affairs, NPR, and Bloomberg, among others.
Manne is a member of the American Law and Economics Association, the Canadian Law and Economics Association, and the Society for Institutional & Organizational Economics. He blogs at Truth on the Market (www.truthonthemarket.com) (of which he is also the co-founder), is a contributor at WIRED, and tweets at @geoffmanne. His scholarly publications are available at http://ssrn.com/author=175541.
U.S. Court of Appeals, Seventh Circuit
Frank H. Easterbrook is a judge of the United States Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit and a Senior Lecturer at the Law School of the University of Chicago. He was Chief Judge from 2006–2013. Before joining the court in 1985, he was the Lee andBrena Freeman Professor of Law at the University of Chicago, where he taught and wrote in antitrust, securities, corporate law, jurisprudence, and criminal procedure. He has published The Economic Structure of Corporate Law (with Daniel R. Fischel) and about 100 scholarly articles. He served as Co-Editor of the Journal of Law and Economics from 1982 to 1991 and as a member of the Judicial Conference’s Standing Committee on Rules of Practice and Procedure from 1991 to 1997. Before joining the faculty of the Law School in 1979, Judge Easterbrook was Deputy Solicitor General of the United States. He holds degrees from Swarthmore College (B.A. with high honors, 1970) and the University of Chicago (J.D. cum laude, 1973), and is a member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, the American Law Institute, the Mont Pelerin Society, Phi Beta Kappa, and the Order of the Coif.
Partner, Rule Garza Howley LLP
Partner, White & Case
Mr. Grannon helps clients with antitrust matters, including civil and criminal defense as well as counseling for mergers and acquisitions and settlements of pharmaceutical patent litigation. Since 2001, he also has helped clients with concerns under the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act (FCPA) and other anti-corruption issues. Mr. Grannon began at the firm as a summer associate in 1997 and has been a partner since 2007.
A former prosecutor, Mr. Grannon returned to White & Case after serving as Counsel to the Assistant Attorney General in charge of the Antitrust Division of the United States Department of Justice (DOJ) in 2003-04, where he helped formulate US antitrust enforcement policy and manage the civil and criminal investigations and court cases brought by the Antitrust Division. He ended his DOJ service with a detail as a Special Assistant US Attorney in the District of Columbia, trying twenty bench and jury trials as lead counsel.
In private practice, Mr. Grannon has argued on behalf of clients in district courts across the country, including a successful verdict for defendants in an antitrust jury trial, argued appeals in the Eleventh and DC Circuits, and worked on eleven matters before the US Supreme Court, ten of which were antitrust cases.
Mr. Grannon clerked for the Honorable Walter K. Stapleton, US Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit, 1999-2000, and the Honorable Federico A. Moreno, US District Court for the Southern District of Florida, 1998-99.
He is a member of the Legal Policy Board of the Washington Legal Foundation.
Mr. Grannon served a three-year term, 2015-18, on the American Bar Association's Standing Committee on Amicus Curiae Briefs.
He previously served as Vice-Chair of the Health Care and Pharmaceuticals Committee of the American Bar Association Section of Antitrust Law, and prior to that as Vice-Chair of its Compliance and Ethics Committee.
Mr. Grannon has served as an adjunct faculty member at the Howard University School of Law, where he taught a seminar on advanced antitrust law.
Professor of the Practice of Law, Stanford Law School
Doug Melamed practiced law for 43 years before spending the 2014-15 academic year at the Law School as the Herman Phleger Visiting Professor of Law. He was appointed Professor of the Practice of Law in 2015.
From 2009 until 2014, Professor Melamed was Senior Vice President and General Counsel of Intel Corporation and was responsible for overseeing Intel’s legal, government affairs and corporate affairs departments. Prior to joining Intel in 2009, he was a partner in the Washington, D.C., office of WilmerHale, a global law firm in which he served as a chair of the Antitrust and Competition Practice Group. His practice included appellate and trial court litigation, counseling, and representing clients in matters before government law enforcement and regulatory agencies. He joined WilmerHale’s predecessor in 1971. From 1996 to 2001, Professor Melamed served in the U.S. Department of Justice as Acting Assistant Attorney General in charge of the Antitrust Division and, before that, as Principal Deputy Assistant Attorney General.
Professor Melamed has received numerous professional awards and honors. He has been the Distinguished Visitor from Practice and an adjunct professor at the Georgetown University Law Center, and he has authored numerous articles on antitrust and on law and economics. He is a member of the boards of directors of the Nasdaq exchanges and the American Law Institute and a Contributing Editor of the Antitrust Law Journal. He was for many years a member of the Yale University Council and a member of the board of trustees of Sidwell Friends School in Washington, D.C. After graduating from law school, he clerked for Judge Charles M. Merrill of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit.
Judge, United States Court of Appeals, Sixth Circuit
John B. Nalbandian serves as a United States Circuit Judge from Kentucky on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit. He was nominated and confirmed to that position in 2018. Prior to that, Judge Nalbandian was a partner in the litigation practice group of Taft Stettinius & Hollister LLP in Cincinnati, where he served as the firm’s lead appellate lawyer and also practiced complex litigation in state and federal courts. Judge Nalbandian was board certified by the Ohio State Bar Association as a specialist in appellate law. Prior to joining Taft, Judge Nalbandian practiced for five years in the appellate section of Jones Day in Washington, DC. Upon graduation from law school, Judge Nalbandian clerked for the Honorable Jerry E. Smith of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit in Houston. While in private practice, he also served as a board member of the State Justice Institute, a nonprofit organization established by the federal government to improve the administration of justice in state courts. He served as President of the Cincinnati Lawyers Chapter of the Federalist Society. He has also been involved in his community as a board member of the Greater Cincinnati Minority Counsel Program, and as a board member of the Asian Pacific Bar Association of Southwest Ohio. Judge Nalbandian earned his B.S., magna cum laude, from the Wharton School at the University of Pennsylvania and his J.D. from the University of Virginia School of Law, where he was inducted into the Order of the Coif and served as managing editor of the Virginia Law Review.
Associate Professor of Law and Director, Program on Economics & Privacy, Antonin Scalia Law School, George Mason University
Associate Professor of Law James C. Cooper brings over a decade of public and private sector experience to his research and teaching. He served as Deputy and Acting Director of the Federal Trade Commission’s Office of Policy Planning, Advisor to Federal Trade Commissioner William Kovacic, and an associate in the antitrust group of Crowell and Moring, LLP. His research on vertical restraints, price discrimination, behavioral economics and antitrust, and privacy policy have appeared in top journals and are widely cited.
Professor Cooper has a BA from the University of South Carolina, received his PhD in economics from Emory University, and his law degree (magna cum laude) from Antonin Scalia Law School, George Mason University, where he was a Levy Fellow and a member of the George Mason Law Review.
He teaches Economics for Lawyers, Advanced Seminar on Law & Economics, and Digital Information Policy Seminar.
Partner, Sullivan & Cromwell LLP
Andrei Iancu is a partner at Sullivan & Cromwell and one of the leading voices in intellectual property law and innovation policy. He is a former Undersecretary of Commerce for Intellectual Property and Director of the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO), a position to which he was confirmed unanimously by the Senate. Andrei has decades of experience representing plaintiffs and defendants in IP matters across the technical and scientific spectra, including medical devices, genetic testing, therapeutics, the Internet, telephony, TV broadcasting, video game systems and computer peripherals. He represents clients in litigation and trials before the district courts, the U.S. International Trade Commission and the USPTO, the Federal Circuit and U.S. Supreme Court, and also counsels clients on obtaining, licensing, enforcing and defending against IP rights globally.
Former Under Secretary of Commerce for Intellectual Property and Director, U.S. Patent and Trademark Office
The Hon. Michelle K. Lee is a proven leader in technology, law, business and government. She spent most of her professional career advising some of the country's most innovative companies on issues at the intersection of law, technology and policy.
As the Under Secretary of Commerce for Intellectual Property and Director of the United States Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO), Ms. Lee led one of the largest intellectual property offices in the world, with 13,000 employees and an annual budget of over $3 billion. Ms. Lee also served as the principal advisor to the President, through the Secretary of Commerce, on domestic and international intellectual property policy and a trial judge on the USPTO’s Patent Trial and Appeal Board. She is the first woman Director of the USPTO in our country’s 200+ year history.
Prior to joining the USPTO, Ms. Lee was Deputy General Counsel at Google, where she was responsible for formulating and implementing Google’s patent strategy (including dispute resolution) for all its products and services worldwide. Before Google, Ms. Lee served as a partner at Fenwick & West, advising on technology licensing, litigation, intellectual property, corporate and mergers and acquisition matters, and as a litigator at the trial boutique law firm of Keker & Van Nest. Earlier in her career, Ms. Lee worked as a computer scientist at Hewlett-Packard Research Laboratories and the MIT Artificial Intelligence Lab. She holds a B.S. and an M.S. in electrical engineering and computer science from MIT (where she wrote her graduate thesis on artificial intelligence) and a J.D. from Stanford Law School. Ms. Lee clerked for the Honorable Vaughn Walker, U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California and the Honorable Paul Michel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit.
From 2017-2018, Ms. Lee held the appointment as the Herman Phleger Visiting Professor at Law at Stanford Law School where she taught on disruptive technologies (including artificial intelligence and driverless cars) and their impact on existing laws and regulations. Ms. Lee also serves on a number of public and private company boards including alarm.com (NASDAQ: ALRM) and Nauto, Inc.
Judge, United States Court of Appeals, Third Circuit
David J. Porter is a judge on the United States Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit. He was nominated by President Donald Trump and confirmed on October 11, 2018. Before his appointment, he was a shareholder at Buchanan Ingersoll & Rooney PC, where he practiced commercial and civil litigation. Porter received his bachelor’s degree from Grove City College and his J.D. from the George Mason University School of Law. He clerked for Judge D. Brooks Smith on the United States District Court for the Western District of Pennsylvania.
Of Counsel, Jones Day
Dr. Ognian Shentov is a lead trial lawyer who secured over $30 million damages in a patent infringement case, where the jury verdict was affirmed en banc by the Federal Circuit. He directed a joint defense group of international companies in a semiconductor manufacturing dispute and has led jury trials, arbitrations, and numerous claim construction and summary judgment hearings. His practice focuses on patent, trade secret, copyright, and complex technology issues in the electronics, communications, artificial intelligence (AI), medical device, and finance industries.
Oggie represents companies like IBM, Qualcomm, DirecTV, Lenovo, Marine Polymer, and Chevron in matters ranging from distributed servers, to satellite television, MPEG video, dynamic web page generation, anti-hemmoraging devices, and trade secret misappropriation of high-throughput technology. He was lead attorney in an instituted PTAB trial on Distributed Antenna Systems. Oggie also represents Korean companies, successfully defending SOLiD, Inc. against a competitor by defeating the asserted patents on summary judgment and jury verdict of noninfringement, as well as Sewoon and Taewoong in a dispute over stents. With litigation in mind, he also builds patent portfolios and has prosecuted more than 500 patents with international counterparts.
Oggie is vice chair of the International Patent Law and Trade committee of the Intellectual Property Owners (IPO) Association and a five-term vice chair of its U.S. Patent Law committee. He frequently leads panel discussions on intellectual property (IP), lectures internationally on AI-related legal issues and, along with several technical journal articles, has published on issues of patent eligibility, international IP protection, portfolio management, and monetization.
Senior Analyst, Futurum Research
Olivier Blanchard has extensive experience managing product innovation, technology adoption, digital integration, and change management for industry leaders in the B2B, B2C, B2G sectors, and the IT channel. His passion is helping decision-makers and their organizations understand the many risks and opportunities of technology-driven disruption, and leverage innovation to build stronger, better, more competitive companies. A trusted source of analysis and insights on digital business and digital innovation, Olivier also travels the globe speaking about business technology, Disruption as a Model (DaaM), and the impact of innovation on markets and culture. He is also the best-selling author of Social Media RIO: Managing and Measuring Social Media Efforts in Your Organization, and co-author of Building Dragons: Digital Transformation in the Experience Economy. Blanchard is based in Greenville, South Carolina.
President and Founder, International Center for Law & Economics
Geoffrey A. Manne is the president and founder of the International Center for Law and Economics (ICLE), a nonprofit, nonpartisan research center based in Portland, Oregon. He is also a distinguished fellow at Northwestern Law School’s Searle Center on Law, Regulation, & Economic Growth. In April 2017 he was appointed by FCC Chairman Ajit Pai to the FCC’s Broadband Deployment Advisory Committee, and he recently served for two years on the FCC’s Consumer Advisory Committee.
Mr. Manne earned his JD and AB degrees from the University of Chicago and is an expert in the economic analysis of law, specializing in competition, telecommunications, consumer protection, intellectual property, and technology policy.
Prior to founding ICLE, Manne was a law professor at Lewis & Clark Law School. From 2006-2009, he took a leave from teaching to develop Microsoft’s law and economics academic outreach program. Manne has also served as a lecturer in law at the University of Chicago Law School and the University of Virginia School of Law. He practiced antitrust law and appellate litigation at Latham & Watkins, clerked for Hon. Morris S. Arnold on the 8th Circuit Court of Appeals, and worked as a research assistant for Judge Richard Posner. He was also once (very briefly) employed by the FTC.
Mr. Manne’s publications have appeared in numerous journals including the Journal of Competition Law and Economics, the Harvard Journal of Law and Technology, the Supreme Court Economic Review, and the Arizona Law Review, among others. With former FTC Commissioner, Joshua Wright, Manne is the editor of a volume from Cambridge University Press entitled, Competition Policy and Intellectual Property Law Under Uncertainty: Regulating Innovation. Manne has also testified on several occasions before Congress and at the FCC and FTC, and he regularly files written comments and amicus briefs on key antitrust, IP, and telecommunications issues. His analysis is frequently published in popular print and broadcasting outlets such as the Wall Street Journal, Wired, Foreign Affairs, NPR, and Bloomberg, among others.
Manne is a member of the American Law and Economics Association, the Canadian Law and Economics Association, and the Society for Institutional & Organizational Economics. He blogs at Truth on the Market (www.truthonthemarket.com) (of which he is also the co-founder), is a contributor at WIRED, and tweets at @geoffmanne. His scholarly publications are available at http://ssrn.com/author=175541.
Associate Professor of Law and Director, Program on Economics & Privacy, Antonin Scalia Law School, George Mason University
Associate Professor of Law James C. Cooper brings over a decade of public and private sector experience to his research and teaching. He served as Deputy and Acting Director of the Federal Trade Commission’s Office of Policy Planning, Advisor to Federal Trade Commissioner William Kovacic, and an associate in the antitrust group of Crowell and Moring, LLP. His research on vertical restraints, price discrimination, behavioral economics and antitrust, and privacy policy have appeared in top journals and are widely cited.
Professor Cooper has a BA from the University of South Carolina, received his PhD in economics from Emory University, and his law degree (magna cum laude) from Antonin Scalia Law School, George Mason University, where he was a Levy Fellow and a member of the George Mason Law Review.
He teaches Economics for Lawyers, Advanced Seminar on Law & Economics, and Digital Information Policy Seminar.
Partner, Sullivan & Cromwell LLP
Andrei Iancu is a partner at Sullivan & Cromwell and one of the leading voices in intellectual property law and innovation policy. He is a former Undersecretary of Commerce for Intellectual Property and Director of the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO), a position to which he was confirmed unanimously by the Senate. Andrei has decades of experience representing plaintiffs and defendants in IP matters across the technical and scientific spectra, including medical devices, genetic testing, therapeutics, the Internet, telephony, TV broadcasting, video game systems and computer peripherals. He represents clients in litigation and trials before the district courts, the U.S. International Trade Commission and the USPTO, the Federal Circuit and U.S. Supreme Court, and also counsels clients on obtaining, licensing, enforcing and defending against IP rights globally.
Former Under Secretary of Commerce for Intellectual Property and Director, U.S. Patent and Trademark Office
The Hon. Michelle K. Lee is a proven leader in technology, law, business and government. She spent most of her professional career advising some of the country's most innovative companies on issues at the intersection of law, technology and policy.
As the Under Secretary of Commerce for Intellectual Property and Director of the United States Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO), Ms. Lee led one of the largest intellectual property offices in the world, with 13,000 employees and an annual budget of over $3 billion. Ms. Lee also served as the principal advisor to the President, through the Secretary of Commerce, on domestic and international intellectual property policy and a trial judge on the USPTO’s Patent Trial and Appeal Board. She is the first woman Director of the USPTO in our country’s 200+ year history.
Prior to joining the USPTO, Ms. Lee was Deputy General Counsel at Google, where she was responsible for formulating and implementing Google’s patent strategy (including dispute resolution) for all its products and services worldwide. Before Google, Ms. Lee served as a partner at Fenwick & West, advising on technology licensing, litigation, intellectual property, corporate and mergers and acquisition matters, and as a litigator at the trial boutique law firm of Keker & Van Nest. Earlier in her career, Ms. Lee worked as a computer scientist at Hewlett-Packard Research Laboratories and the MIT Artificial Intelligence Lab. She holds a B.S. and an M.S. in electrical engineering and computer science from MIT (where she wrote her graduate thesis on artificial intelligence) and a J.D. from Stanford Law School. Ms. Lee clerked for the Honorable Vaughn Walker, U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California and the Honorable Paul Michel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit.
From 2017-2018, Ms. Lee held the appointment as the Herman Phleger Visiting Professor at Law at Stanford Law School where she taught on disruptive technologies (including artificial intelligence and driverless cars) and their impact on existing laws and regulations. Ms. Lee also serves on a number of public and private company boards including alarm.com (NASDAQ: ALRM) and Nauto, Inc.
Judge, United States Court of Appeals, Third Circuit
David J. Porter is a judge on the United States Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit. He was nominated by President Donald Trump and confirmed on October 11, 2018. Before his appointment, he was a shareholder at Buchanan Ingersoll & Rooney PC, where he practiced commercial and civil litigation. Porter received his bachelor’s degree from Grove City College and his J.D. from the George Mason University School of Law. He clerked for Judge D. Brooks Smith on the United States District Court for the Western District of Pennsylvania.
Of Counsel, Jones Day
Dr. Ognian Shentov is a lead trial lawyer who secured over $30 million damages in a patent infringement case, where the jury verdict was affirmed en banc by the Federal Circuit. He directed a joint defense group of international companies in a semiconductor manufacturing dispute and has led jury trials, arbitrations, and numerous claim construction and summary judgment hearings. His practice focuses on patent, trade secret, copyright, and complex technology issues in the electronics, communications, artificial intelligence (AI), medical device, and finance industries.
Oggie represents companies like IBM, Qualcomm, DirecTV, Lenovo, Marine Polymer, and Chevron in matters ranging from distributed servers, to satellite television, MPEG video, dynamic web page generation, anti-hemmoraging devices, and trade secret misappropriation of high-throughput technology. He was lead attorney in an instituted PTAB trial on Distributed Antenna Systems. Oggie also represents Korean companies, successfully defending SOLiD, Inc. against a competitor by defeating the asserted patents on summary judgment and jury verdict of noninfringement, as well as Sewoon and Taewoong in a dispute over stents. With litigation in mind, he also builds patent portfolios and has prosecuted more than 500 patents with international counterparts.
Oggie is vice chair of the International Patent Law and Trade committee of the Intellectual Property Owners (IPO) Association and a five-term vice chair of its U.S. Patent Law committee. He frequently leads panel discussions on intellectual property (IP), lectures internationally on AI-related legal issues and, along with several technical journal articles, has published on issues of patent eligibility, international IP protection, portfolio management, and monetization.
U.S. Court of Appeals, Seventh Circuit
Frank H. Easterbrook is a judge of the United States Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit and a Senior Lecturer at the Law School of the University of Chicago. He was Chief Judge from 2006–2013. Before joining the court in 1985, he was the Lee andBrena Freeman Professor of Law at the University of Chicago, where he taught and wrote in antitrust, securities, corporate law, jurisprudence, and criminal procedure. He has published The Economic Structure of Corporate Law (with Daniel R. Fischel) and about 100 scholarly articles. He served as Co-Editor of the Journal of Law and Economics from 1982 to 1991 and as a member of the Judicial Conference’s Standing Committee on Rules of Practice and Procedure from 1991 to 1997. Before joining the faculty of the Law School in 1979, Judge Easterbrook was Deputy Solicitor General of the United States. He holds degrees from Swarthmore College (B.A. with high honors, 1970) and the University of Chicago (J.D. cum laude, 1973), and is a member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, the American Law Institute, the Mont Pelerin Society, Phi Beta Kappa, and the Order of the Coif.
Partner, Rule Garza Howley LLP
Partner, White & Case
Mr. Grannon helps clients with antitrust matters, including civil and criminal defense as well as counseling for mergers and acquisitions and settlements of pharmaceutical patent litigation. Since 2001, he also has helped clients with concerns under the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act (FCPA) and other anti-corruption issues. Mr. Grannon began at the firm as a summer associate in 1997 and has been a partner since 2007.
A former prosecutor, Mr. Grannon returned to White & Case after serving as Counsel to the Assistant Attorney General in charge of the Antitrust Division of the United States Department of Justice (DOJ) in 2003-04, where he helped formulate US antitrust enforcement policy and manage the civil and criminal investigations and court cases brought by the Antitrust Division. He ended his DOJ service with a detail as a Special Assistant US Attorney in the District of Columbia, trying twenty bench and jury trials as lead counsel.
In private practice, Mr. Grannon has argued on behalf of clients in district courts across the country, including a successful verdict for defendants in an antitrust jury trial, argued appeals in the Eleventh and DC Circuits, and worked on eleven matters before the US Supreme Court, ten of which were antitrust cases.
Mr. Grannon clerked for the Honorable Walter K. Stapleton, US Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit, 1999-2000, and the Honorable Federico A. Moreno, US District Court for the Southern District of Florida, 1998-99.
He is a member of the Legal Policy Board of the Washington Legal Foundation.
Mr. Grannon served a three-year term, 2015-18, on the American Bar Association's Standing Committee on Amicus Curiae Briefs.
He previously served as Vice-Chair of the Health Care and Pharmaceuticals Committee of the American Bar Association Section of Antitrust Law, and prior to that as Vice-Chair of its Compliance and Ethics Committee.
Mr. Grannon has served as an adjunct faculty member at the Howard University School of Law, where he taught a seminar on advanced antitrust law.
Professor of the Practice of Law, Stanford Law School
Doug Melamed practiced law for 43 years before spending the 2014-15 academic year at the Law School as the Herman Phleger Visiting Professor of Law. He was appointed Professor of the Practice of Law in 2015.
From 2009 until 2014, Professor Melamed was Senior Vice President and General Counsel of Intel Corporation and was responsible for overseeing Intel’s legal, government affairs and corporate affairs departments. Prior to joining Intel in 2009, he was a partner in the Washington, D.C., office of WilmerHale, a global law firm in which he served as a chair of the Antitrust and Competition Practice Group. His practice included appellate and trial court litigation, counseling, and representing clients in matters before government law enforcement and regulatory agencies. He joined WilmerHale’s predecessor in 1971. From 1996 to 2001, Professor Melamed served in the U.S. Department of Justice as Acting Assistant Attorney General in charge of the Antitrust Division and, before that, as Principal Deputy Assistant Attorney General.
Professor Melamed has received numerous professional awards and honors. He has been the Distinguished Visitor from Practice and an adjunct professor at the Georgetown University Law Center, and he has authored numerous articles on antitrust and on law and economics. He is a member of the boards of directors of the Nasdaq exchanges and the American Law Institute and a Contributing Editor of the Antitrust Law Journal. He was for many years a member of the Yale University Council and a member of the board of trustees of Sidwell Friends School in Washington, D.C. After graduating from law school, he clerked for Judge Charles M. Merrill of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit.
Judge, United States Court of Appeals, Sixth Circuit
John B. Nalbandian serves as a United States Circuit Judge from Kentucky on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit. He was nominated and confirmed to that position in 2018. Prior to that, Judge Nalbandian was a partner in the litigation practice group of Taft Stettinius & Hollister LLP in Cincinnati, where he served as the firm’s lead appellate lawyer and also practiced complex litigation in state and federal courts. Judge Nalbandian was board certified by the Ohio State Bar Association as a specialist in appellate law. Prior to joining Taft, Judge Nalbandian practiced for five years in the appellate section of Jones Day in Washington, DC. Upon graduation from law school, Judge Nalbandian clerked for the Honorable Jerry E. Smith of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit in Houston. While in private practice, he also served as a board member of the State Justice Institute, a nonprofit organization established by the federal government to improve the administration of justice in state courts. He served as President of the Cincinnati Lawyers Chapter of the Federalist Society. He has also been involved in his community as a board member of the Greater Cincinnati Minority Counsel Program, and as a board member of the Asian Pacific Bar Association of Southwest Ohio. Judge Nalbandian earned his B.S., magna cum laude, from the Wharton School at the University of Pennsylvania and his J.D. from the University of Virginia School of Law, where he was inducted into the Order of the Coif and served as managing editor of the Virginia Law Review.
U.S. Court of Appeals, Seventh Circuit
Frank H. Easterbrook is a judge of the United States Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit and a Senior Lecturer at the Law School of the University of Chicago. He was Chief Judge from 2006–2013. Before joining the court in 1985, he was the Lee andBrena Freeman Professor of Law at the University of Chicago, where he taught and wrote in antitrust, securities, corporate law, jurisprudence, and criminal procedure. He has published The Economic Structure of Corporate Law (with Daniel R. Fischel) and about 100 scholarly articles. He served as Co-Editor of the Journal of Law and Economics from 1982 to 1991 and as a member of the Judicial Conference’s Standing Committee on Rules of Practice and Procedure from 1991 to 1997. Before joining the faculty of the Law School in 1979, Judge Easterbrook was Deputy Solicitor General of the United States. He holds degrees from Swarthmore College (B.A. with high honors, 1970) and the University of Chicago (J.D. cum laude, 1973), and is a member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, the American Law Institute, the Mont Pelerin Society, Phi Beta Kappa, and the Order of the Coif.
Partner, Rule Garza Howley LLP
Partner, White & Case
Mr. Grannon helps clients with antitrust matters, including civil and criminal defense as well as counseling for mergers and acquisitions and settlements of pharmaceutical patent litigation. Since 2001, he also has helped clients with concerns under the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act (FCPA) and other anti-corruption issues. Mr. Grannon began at the firm as a summer associate in 1997 and has been a partner since 2007.
A former prosecutor, Mr. Grannon returned to White & Case after serving as Counsel to the Assistant Attorney General in charge of the Antitrust Division of the United States Department of Justice (DOJ) in 2003-04, where he helped formulate US antitrust enforcement policy and manage the civil and criminal investigations and court cases brought by the Antitrust Division. He ended his DOJ service with a detail as a Special Assistant US Attorney in the District of Columbia, trying twenty bench and jury trials as lead counsel.
In private practice, Mr. Grannon has argued on behalf of clients in district courts across the country, including a successful verdict for defendants in an antitrust jury trial, argued appeals in the Eleventh and DC Circuits, and worked on eleven matters before the US Supreme Court, ten of which were antitrust cases.
Mr. Grannon clerked for the Honorable Walter K. Stapleton, US Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit, 1999-2000, and the Honorable Federico A. Moreno, US District Court for the Southern District of Florida, 1998-99.
He is a member of the Legal Policy Board of the Washington Legal Foundation.
Mr. Grannon served a three-year term, 2015-18, on the American Bar Association's Standing Committee on Amicus Curiae Briefs.
He previously served as Vice-Chair of the Health Care and Pharmaceuticals Committee of the American Bar Association Section of Antitrust Law, and prior to that as Vice-Chair of its Compliance and Ethics Committee.
Mr. Grannon has served as an adjunct faculty member at the Howard University School of Law, where he taught a seminar on advanced antitrust law.
Professor of the Practice of Law, Stanford Law School
Doug Melamed practiced law for 43 years before spending the 2014-15 academic year at the Law School as the Herman Phleger Visiting Professor of Law. He was appointed Professor of the Practice of Law in 2015.
From 2009 until 2014, Professor Melamed was Senior Vice President and General Counsel of Intel Corporation and was responsible for overseeing Intel’s legal, government affairs and corporate affairs departments. Prior to joining Intel in 2009, he was a partner in the Washington, D.C., office of WilmerHale, a global law firm in which he served as a chair of the Antitrust and Competition Practice Group. His practice included appellate and trial court litigation, counseling, and representing clients in matters before government law enforcement and regulatory agencies. He joined WilmerHale’s predecessor in 1971. From 1996 to 2001, Professor Melamed served in the U.S. Department of Justice as Acting Assistant Attorney General in charge of the Antitrust Division and, before that, as Principal Deputy Assistant Attorney General.
Professor Melamed has received numerous professional awards and honors. He has been the Distinguished Visitor from Practice and an adjunct professor at the Georgetown University Law Center, and he has authored numerous articles on antitrust and on law and economics. He is a member of the boards of directors of the Nasdaq exchanges and the American Law Institute and a Contributing Editor of the Antitrust Law Journal. He was for many years a member of the Yale University Council and a member of the board of trustees of Sidwell Friends School in Washington, D.C. After graduating from law school, he clerked for Judge Charles M. Merrill of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit.
Judge, United States Court of Appeals, Sixth Circuit
John B. Nalbandian serves as a United States Circuit Judge from Kentucky on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit. He was nominated and confirmed to that position in 2018. Prior to that, Judge Nalbandian was a partner in the litigation practice group of Taft Stettinius & Hollister LLP in Cincinnati, where he served as the firm’s lead appellate lawyer and also practiced complex litigation in state and federal courts. Judge Nalbandian was board certified by the Ohio State Bar Association as a specialist in appellate law. Prior to joining Taft, Judge Nalbandian practiced for five years in the appellate section of Jones Day in Washington, DC. Upon graduation from law school, Judge Nalbandian clerked for the Honorable Jerry E. Smith of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit in Houston. While in private practice, he also served as a board member of the State Justice Institute, a nonprofit organization established by the federal government to improve the administration of justice in state courts. He served as President of the Cincinnati Lawyers Chapter of the Federalist Society. He has also been involved in his community as a board member of the Greater Cincinnati Minority Counsel Program, and as a board member of the Asian Pacific Bar Association of Southwest Ohio. Judge Nalbandian earned his B.S., magna cum laude, from the Wharton School at the University of Pennsylvania and his J.D. from the University of Virginia School of Law, where he was inducted into the Order of the Coif and served as managing editor of the Virginia Law Review.
Associate Professor of Law and Director, Program on Economics & Privacy, Antonin Scalia Law School, George Mason University
Associate Professor of Law James C. Cooper brings over a decade of public and private sector experience to his research and teaching. He served as Deputy and Acting Director of the Federal Trade Commission’s Office of Policy Planning, Advisor to Federal Trade Commissioner William Kovacic, and an associate in the antitrust group of Crowell and Moring, LLP. His research on vertical restraints, price discrimination, behavioral economics and antitrust, and privacy policy have appeared in top journals and are widely cited.
Professor Cooper has a BA from the University of South Carolina, received his PhD in economics from Emory University, and his law degree (magna cum laude) from Antonin Scalia Law School, George Mason University, where he was a Levy Fellow and a member of the George Mason Law Review.
He teaches Economics for Lawyers, Advanced Seminar on Law & Economics, and Digital Information Policy Seminar.
Partner, Sullivan & Cromwell LLP
Andrei Iancu is a partner at Sullivan & Cromwell and one of the leading voices in intellectual property law and innovation policy. He is a former Undersecretary of Commerce for Intellectual Property and Director of the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO), a position to which he was confirmed unanimously by the Senate. Andrei has decades of experience representing plaintiffs and defendants in IP matters across the technical and scientific spectra, including medical devices, genetic testing, therapeutics, the Internet, telephony, TV broadcasting, video game systems and computer peripherals. He represents clients in litigation and trials before the district courts, the U.S. International Trade Commission and the USPTO, the Federal Circuit and U.S. Supreme Court, and also counsels clients on obtaining, licensing, enforcing and defending against IP rights globally.
Former Under Secretary of Commerce for Intellectual Property and Director, U.S. Patent and Trademark Office
The Hon. Michelle K. Lee is a proven leader in technology, law, business and government. She spent most of her professional career advising some of the country's most innovative companies on issues at the intersection of law, technology and policy.
As the Under Secretary of Commerce for Intellectual Property and Director of the United States Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO), Ms. Lee led one of the largest intellectual property offices in the world, with 13,000 employees and an annual budget of over $3 billion. Ms. Lee also served as the principal advisor to the President, through the Secretary of Commerce, on domestic and international intellectual property policy and a trial judge on the USPTO’s Patent Trial and Appeal Board. She is the first woman Director of the USPTO in our country’s 200+ year history.
Prior to joining the USPTO, Ms. Lee was Deputy General Counsel at Google, where she was responsible for formulating and implementing Google’s patent strategy (including dispute resolution) for all its products and services worldwide. Before Google, Ms. Lee served as a partner at Fenwick & West, advising on technology licensing, litigation, intellectual property, corporate and mergers and acquisition matters, and as a litigator at the trial boutique law firm of Keker & Van Nest. Earlier in her career, Ms. Lee worked as a computer scientist at Hewlett-Packard Research Laboratories and the MIT Artificial Intelligence Lab. She holds a B.S. and an M.S. in electrical engineering and computer science from MIT (where she wrote her graduate thesis on artificial intelligence) and a J.D. from Stanford Law School. Ms. Lee clerked for the Honorable Vaughn Walker, U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California and the Honorable Paul Michel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit.
From 2017-2018, Ms. Lee held the appointment as the Herman Phleger Visiting Professor at Law at Stanford Law School where she taught on disruptive technologies (including artificial intelligence and driverless cars) and their impact on existing laws and regulations. Ms. Lee also serves on a number of public and private company boards including alarm.com (NASDAQ: ALRM) and Nauto, Inc.
Judge, United States Court of Appeals, Third Circuit
David J. Porter is a judge on the United States Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit. He was nominated by President Donald Trump and confirmed on October 11, 2018. Before his appointment, he was a shareholder at Buchanan Ingersoll & Rooney PC, where he practiced commercial and civil litigation. Porter received his bachelor’s degree from Grove City College and his J.D. from the George Mason University School of Law. He clerked for Judge D. Brooks Smith on the United States District Court for the Western District of Pennsylvania.
Of Counsel, Jones Day
Dr. Ognian Shentov is a lead trial lawyer who secured over $30 million damages in a patent infringement case, where the jury verdict was affirmed en banc by the Federal Circuit. He directed a joint defense group of international companies in a semiconductor manufacturing dispute and has led jury trials, arbitrations, and numerous claim construction and summary judgment hearings. His practice focuses on patent, trade secret, copyright, and complex technology issues in the electronics, communications, artificial intelligence (AI), medical device, and finance industries.
Oggie represents companies like IBM, Qualcomm, DirecTV, Lenovo, Marine Polymer, and Chevron in matters ranging from distributed servers, to satellite television, MPEG video, dynamic web page generation, anti-hemmoraging devices, and trade secret misappropriation of high-throughput technology. He was lead attorney in an instituted PTAB trial on Distributed Antenna Systems. Oggie also represents Korean companies, successfully defending SOLiD, Inc. against a competitor by defeating the asserted patents on summary judgment and jury verdict of noninfringement, as well as Sewoon and Taewoong in a dispute over stents. With litigation in mind, he also builds patent portfolios and has prosecuted more than 500 patents with international counterparts.
Oggie is vice chair of the International Patent Law and Trade committee of the Intellectual Property Owners (IPO) Association and a five-term vice chair of its U.S. Patent Law committee. He frequently leads panel discussions on intellectual property (IP), lectures internationally on AI-related legal issues and, along with several technical journal articles, has published on issues of patent eligibility, international IP protection, portfolio management, and monetization.
Fireside Chat with Commissioner Christine Wilson, Federal Trade Commission
Telecommunications & Electronic Media Practice Group and Corporations, Securities, and Antitrust Practice Group
Washington, DCFederal Trade Commission v. Qualcomm Incorporated: Post-Mortem
Olivier Blanchard, Geoffrey A. Manne
This teleforum will investigate the potential impact of the pending decision in the FTC's controversial...
Federal Trade Commission v. Qualcomm Incorporated: Post-Mortem
TeleforumTopics
FTC v. Qualcomm: Innovation and Competition
Just days before leaving office, the outgoing Obama FTC left what should have been an...
A New Approach to Antitrust Law: Transparency
2018 National Lawyers Convention
Washington, DCArtificial Intelligence and Big Data Innovation: Navigating the Technology World of the Near Future
2018 National Lawyers Convention
Washington, DCArtificial Intelligence and Big Data Innovation: Navigating the Technology World of the Near Future
James C. Cooper, Shawn D. Hamacher, Andrei Iancu, Michelle K. Lee, David James Porter, Ognian V. Shentov
Technology progress in recent years has been driven in large part by the continuous generation...
A New Approach to Antitrust Law: Transparency
Frank H. Easterbrook, Deborah A. Garza, Eric Grannon, A. Douglas Melamed, John B. Nalbandian
Antitrust enforcers in the post-Microsoft era, under both Republican and Democratic administrations, have been under...
A New Approach to Antitrust Law: Transparency
Frank H. Easterbrook, Deborah A. Garza, Eric Grannon, A. Douglas Melamed, John B. Nalbandian
Antitrust enforcers in the post-Microsoft era, under both Republican and Democratic administrations, have been under...
Artificial Intelligence and Big Data Innovation: Navigating the Technology World of the Near Future
James C. Cooper, Shawn D. Hamacher, Andrei Iancu, Michelle K. Lee, David James Porter, Ognian V. Shentov
Technology progress in recent years has been driven in large part by the continuous generation...