Former Chief Judge, U.S. Court of Federal Claims
Judge Braden was appointed to the United States Court of Federal Claims on July 14, 2003, by President George W. Bush, after being confirmed by unanimous consent of the United States Senate. She was sworn into office by Senator Jeff Sessions. Her investiture was conducted on October 24, 2003 by Justice Sandra Day O’Connor and Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg.
On January 28, 2015, Judge Braden was appointed by the American Law Institute as one of seven Judicial Advisors to the Restatement of the Law on Copyright. In 2013, Judge Braden was appointed to the Judges Special Committee of the American Intellectual Property Law Association and was named as Chair of the Intellectual Property Committee of the Advisory Council of the United States Court of Federal Claims. On March 23, 2012, Judge Braden received the Linn Inn Alliance Distinguished Service Medal at the New York Intellectual Property Lawyers Association Annual Dinner for her work with the American Inns of Court, dedicated to intellectual property law. On February 7, 2012, Judge Braden was appointed as Chair of the American Bar Association’s Section of Intellectual Property Law Task Force to consider how to more efficiently adjudicate "small" patent infringement cases. During 2010-2011, Judge Braden served as President of the Giles S. Rich American Inn of Court, which is affiliated with the United States Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit. She was recognized at a ceremony in the United States Supreme Court in November 2011, when she received the American Inns of Court’s Platinum Distinction Award. Judge Braden also served as a Member of the Editorial Board of the American Intellectual Property Law Association.
In July 2009, Judge Braden was appointed as a Member of the Standing Committee on Ethics and Professional Responsibility-Judges Advisory Committee to the American Bar Association, on which she served until 2012. On February 14, 2007, Judge Braden was elected as a Member of the American Law Institute and was active in drafting Restatement of Law Third, Restitution and Unjust Enrichment. On October 22, 2004, she was inducted as a Senior Fellow of the ABA’s Administrative Law and Regulatory Section by Justice O’Connor at a ceremony held at the United States Supreme Court.
Prior to joining the bench, Judge Braden litigated complex federal and administrative law cases in private practice in trial and appellate courts. In particular, her work in the intellectual property area received favorable notice in the Wall Street Journal, New York Times, National Law Journal, and the Journal of the American Bar Association, and was featured in Interfaces on Trial: Intellectual Property and Interoperability In The Global Software Industry. In 1996, Judge Braden was honored by the Computer Law Association for winning multiple decisions in the Eastern District of New York, the Eastern District of Texas, the Second Circuit, and a certified question to the Supreme Court of Texas in Computer Assocs. Int’l, Inc. v. Altai Inc., a landmark case that changed the application of copyright law to computer software. In 1998, she also won a companion case brought in France before the Cour de Appel de Paris.
In private practice, Judge Braden represented a wide variety of client interests before almost every major department and federal agency, testified before the United States Congress on a variety of matters, and was a principal lobbyist for the Emergency Oil and Steel Loan Guarantee Act of 1999, that established a $1 billion federal loan guarantee program to assist bankrupt and troubled steel mills and small oil companies.
Judge Braden received a B.A. degree (1970) and J. D. degree (1973) from Case Western Reserve University in Cleveland, Ohio. She also attended post graduate courses at the Harvard Law School in the summer of 1978.
James T. Jensen Endowed Professor for Transactional Law & Director of the Program on Intellectual Property and Technology Law, University of Utah S.J. Quinney College of Law
Jorge L. Contreras is a Distinguished University Professor, the James T. Jensen Endowed Professor for Transactional Law and Director of the Program on Intellectual Property and Technology Law. He teaches and researches in the areas of intellectual property, property law, technical standardization, antitrust and science policy. In 2020 he received the University of Utah's Distinguished Research Award and is an elected member of the American Law Institute. He has testified before the U.S. Senate and House Subcommittees on Intellectual Property, and was awarded the Rossman Memorial Award by the Patent & Trademark Office Society in 2022.
Professor Contreras has written or edited fourteen books and published more than 150 scholarly articles and chapters. His book, The Genome Defense: Inside the Epic Legal Battle to Determine Who Owns Your DNA (NY: Hachette/Algonquin, 2021), has been praised by the NY Times, Wall St. Journal, Nature and numerous other outlets, and was named "Best Patent Law Book of the Year" by the international IPKat blog. His scholarly articles have appeared in leading scientific, legal and policy journals including Science, Nature, NYU Law Review, Georgetown Law Journal, Iowa Law Review and Antitrust Law Journal. He has been quoted by media outlets around the world including the New York Times, Wall Street Journal, Economist, Bloomberg, Washington Post, Korea Times and has been featured on C-SPAN, NPR, PRI and BBC shows and a range of podcasts and online news programs.
Professor Contreras currently serves Co-Chair of the Interdisciplinary Division of the ABA's Section of Science & Technology Law and a member of the Advisory Board of the American Antitrust Institute. He has previously served as Co-Chair of the National Conference of Lawyers and Scientists, a member of the National Academy of Sciences (NAS) Committee on Intellectual Property Management in Standard-Setting Processes, the National Institutes of Health (NIH) Council of Councils, the Advisory Council of NIH's National Center for the Advancement of Translational Sciences (NCATS), the National Advisory Council for Human Genome Research, and the Intellectual Property Rights Policy Committee of the American National Standards Institute (ANSI). In 2021 he served as Chair of the Art Law Section of the Association of American Law Schools (AALS) and currently serves as Chair of the AALS Remedies Section.
Professor Contreras has previously taught at American University Washington College of Law and Washington University in St. Louis. Prior to entering academia he was a partner at the international law firm Wilmer Cutler Pickering Hale and Dorr LLP, where he practiced transactional and intellectual property law in Boston, London and Washington DC. He is a cum laude graduate of Harvard Law School (JD) and Rice University (BA, BSEE) and clerked for Chief Justice Thomas R. Philips of the Texas Supreme Court.
Vice President of Domestic Policy, National Association of Manufacturers
Charles Crain is the Vice President of Domestic Policy at the National Association of Manufacturers. In this role, he leads the association’s policy development and advocacy work on economic policy issues critical to the success of manufacturing in the United States, including tax, corporate governance, technology, health care, regulatory reform, and immigration. Prior to taking on the VP role, Charles led the NAM’s corporate finance policy portfolio, focused primarily on engagement with the Securities and Exchange Commission. He previously worked on Capitol Hill for members of the Senate Finance and House Financial Services Committees and was the Director of Tax and Financial Services Policy at the Biotechnology Innovation Organization.
Senior Counsel for Law and Policy, Committee for Justice
Jeff is a registered patent attorney and an intellectual property and innovation policy professional with a unique combination of training and real-world experience. Jeff is also currently a PhD candidate at the University of Pittsburgh Graduate School of Public and International Affairs (GSPIA). His dissertation is entitled “An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of American Innovation: An Austrian Economics Perspective.”
Jeff maintains an active intellectual property law practice in the life sciences space. While counseling clients and working on his dissertation and other scholarship, Jeff remains active in the policy analysis and advocacy space. He currently serves as the President of the Association for American Innovation and a member and former Chair of the Public Policy Legal Task Force (PPLTF) for the Association of University of Technology Managers (AUTM).
Jeff has a bachelor’s degree chemical and biomedical engineering with concentrations in molecular biology and fermentation technology and from Carnegie Mellon. He also has a master’s degree in industrial administration (business) from Carnegie Mellon where he concentrated on international management, marketing and finance. He earned his law degree from the Duquesne University School of Law with a focus on intellectual property law.
Senior Partner, ACG Advocacy
Chris Israel is a Senior Partner at ACG Advocacy and is also the co-lead of the firm’s technology and intellectual property group.
He joined ACG in 2010, after serving in the George W. Bush Administration as Deputy Chief of
Staff to the Secretary of Commerce and later becoming the first U.S. International Intellectual
Property Enforcement Coordinator.
At ACG Advocacy, Chris works with a diverse range of clients including some of the largest and
most innovative companies in the world to support their efforts to build a policy environment in the U.S. that promotes and protects their investments in intellectual property. He has also
developed a unique focus leading a coalition of top venture capitalists and innovative startups to pursue a policy agenda that has led to improvements in tax policy, investments in R&D, and
strengthening patent protection.
Chris maintains a leadership profile working on IP and innovation issues and has been a frequent public speaker and has testified before Congress multiple times both as an Administration official and since he left public service. He was previously named one of the 50 “Most Influential People on IP” by Managing Intellectual Property magazine.
His international experience in government, particularly in working with China, has enabled him to successfully engage clients on global trade and technology matters ranging from the
negotiations of trade agreements, tariff policy, and engaging international organizations. His
client relationships have included automakers, global manufacturing companies, shipping
companies, and Chinese e-commerce and social media platforms seeking to better understand the U.S. market.
Chris’ experience leading coalitions has also included serving as Executive Director of the
musicFIRST Coalition during the lead-up to the passage of the landmark Music Modernization
Act. During this time he was named to Medium’s inaugural “Power 10” list of music policy
leaders.
Within ACG Advocacy, he provides guidance on the firm’s day-to-day interaction with all its
clients and helps lead ACG’s extensive policy research team. He has also launched the firm’s
podcast focused on policy trends and developments in Washington.
Earlier in his career, Chris worked on international policy issues at Time Warner where he was
part of a team that supported then-CEO, Gerald Levin, to develop the Global Business Dialogue on E-Commerce a ground-breaking global organization of CEOs from the U.S., EU, and Asia that developed industry best practices on matters such as online privacy, cross border data flows, and online taxation.
Prior to Time Warner, he served on Capitol Hill as a legislative aide to U.S. Representatives Jan
Meyers (R-KS) and Todd Tiahrt (R-KS).
Chris received his B.A. from the University of Kansas and an M.B.A. from The George
Washington University.
Former Chief Judge, U.S. Court of Federal Claims
Judge Braden was appointed to the United States Court of Federal Claims on July 14, 2003, by President George W. Bush, after being confirmed by unanimous consent of the United States Senate. She was sworn into office by Senator Jeff Sessions. Her investiture was conducted on October 24, 2003 by Justice Sandra Day O’Connor and Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg.
On January 28, 2015, Judge Braden was appointed by the American Law Institute as one of seven Judicial Advisors to the Restatement of the Law on Copyright. In 2013, Judge Braden was appointed to the Judges Special Committee of the American Intellectual Property Law Association and was named as Chair of the Intellectual Property Committee of the Advisory Council of the United States Court of Federal Claims. On March 23, 2012, Judge Braden received the Linn Inn Alliance Distinguished Service Medal at the New York Intellectual Property Lawyers Association Annual Dinner for her work with the American Inns of Court, dedicated to intellectual property law. On February 7, 2012, Judge Braden was appointed as Chair of the American Bar Association’s Section of Intellectual Property Law Task Force to consider how to more efficiently adjudicate "small" patent infringement cases. During 2010-2011, Judge Braden served as President of the Giles S. Rich American Inn of Court, which is affiliated with the United States Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit. She was recognized at a ceremony in the United States Supreme Court in November 2011, when she received the American Inns of Court’s Platinum Distinction Award. Judge Braden also served as a Member of the Editorial Board of the American Intellectual Property Law Association.
In July 2009, Judge Braden was appointed as a Member of the Standing Committee on Ethics and Professional Responsibility-Judges Advisory Committee to the American Bar Association, on which she served until 2012. On February 14, 2007, Judge Braden was elected as a Member of the American Law Institute and was active in drafting Restatement of Law Third, Restitution and Unjust Enrichment. On October 22, 2004, she was inducted as a Senior Fellow of the ABA’s Administrative Law and Regulatory Section by Justice O’Connor at a ceremony held at the United States Supreme Court.
Prior to joining the bench, Judge Braden litigated complex federal and administrative law cases in private practice in trial and appellate courts. In particular, her work in the intellectual property area received favorable notice in the Wall Street Journal, New York Times, National Law Journal, and the Journal of the American Bar Association, and was featured in Interfaces on Trial: Intellectual Property and Interoperability In The Global Software Industry. In 1996, Judge Braden was honored by the Computer Law Association for winning multiple decisions in the Eastern District of New York, the Eastern District of Texas, the Second Circuit, and a certified question to the Supreme Court of Texas in Computer Assocs. Int’l, Inc. v. Altai Inc., a landmark case that changed the application of copyright law to computer software. In 1998, she also won a companion case brought in France before the Cour de Appel de Paris.
In private practice, Judge Braden represented a wide variety of client interests before almost every major department and federal agency, testified before the United States Congress on a variety of matters, and was a principal lobbyist for the Emergency Oil and Steel Loan Guarantee Act of 1999, that established a $1 billion federal loan guarantee program to assist bankrupt and troubled steel mills and small oil companies.
Judge Braden received a B.A. degree (1970) and J. D. degree (1973) from Case Western Reserve University in Cleveland, Ohio. She also attended post graduate courses at the Harvard Law School in the summer of 1978.
James T. Jensen Endowed Professor for Transactional Law & Director of the Program on Intellectual Property and Technology Law, University of Utah S.J. Quinney College of Law
Jorge L. Contreras is a Distinguished University Professor, the James T. Jensen Endowed Professor for Transactional Law and Director of the Program on Intellectual Property and Technology Law. He teaches and researches in the areas of intellectual property, property law, technical standardization, antitrust and science policy. In 2020 he received the University of Utah's Distinguished Research Award and is an elected member of the American Law Institute. He has testified before the U.S. Senate and House Subcommittees on Intellectual Property, and was awarded the Rossman Memorial Award by the Patent & Trademark Office Society in 2022.
Professor Contreras has written or edited fourteen books and published more than 150 scholarly articles and chapters. His book, The Genome Defense: Inside the Epic Legal Battle to Determine Who Owns Your DNA (NY: Hachette/Algonquin, 2021), has been praised by the NY Times, Wall St. Journal, Nature and numerous other outlets, and was named "Best Patent Law Book of the Year" by the international IPKat blog. His scholarly articles have appeared in leading scientific, legal and policy journals including Science, Nature, NYU Law Review, Georgetown Law Journal, Iowa Law Review and Antitrust Law Journal. He has been quoted by media outlets around the world including the New York Times, Wall Street Journal, Economist, Bloomberg, Washington Post, Korea Times and has been featured on C-SPAN, NPR, PRI and BBC shows and a range of podcasts and online news programs.
Professor Contreras currently serves Co-Chair of the Interdisciplinary Division of the ABA's Section of Science & Technology Law and a member of the Advisory Board of the American Antitrust Institute. He has previously served as Co-Chair of the National Conference of Lawyers and Scientists, a member of the National Academy of Sciences (NAS) Committee on Intellectual Property Management in Standard-Setting Processes, the National Institutes of Health (NIH) Council of Councils, the Advisory Council of NIH's National Center for the Advancement of Translational Sciences (NCATS), the National Advisory Council for Human Genome Research, and the Intellectual Property Rights Policy Committee of the American National Standards Institute (ANSI). In 2021 he served as Chair of the Art Law Section of the Association of American Law Schools (AALS) and currently serves as Chair of the AALS Remedies Section.
Professor Contreras has previously taught at American University Washington College of Law and Washington University in St. Louis. Prior to entering academia he was a partner at the international law firm Wilmer Cutler Pickering Hale and Dorr LLP, where he practiced transactional and intellectual property law in Boston, London and Washington DC. He is a cum laude graduate of Harvard Law School (JD) and Rice University (BA, BSEE) and clerked for Chief Justice Thomas R. Philips of the Texas Supreme Court.
Vice President of Domestic Policy, National Association of Manufacturers
Charles Crain is the Vice President of Domestic Policy at the National Association of Manufacturers. In this role, he leads the association’s policy development and advocacy work on economic policy issues critical to the success of manufacturing in the United States, including tax, corporate governance, technology, health care, regulatory reform, and immigration. Prior to taking on the VP role, Charles led the NAM’s corporate finance policy portfolio, focused primarily on engagement with the Securities and Exchange Commission. He previously worked on Capitol Hill for members of the Senate Finance and House Financial Services Committees and was the Director of Tax and Financial Services Policy at the Biotechnology Innovation Organization.
Senior Counsel for Law and Policy, Committee for Justice
Jeff is a registered patent attorney and an intellectual property and innovation policy professional with a unique combination of training and real-world experience. Jeff is also currently a PhD candidate at the University of Pittsburgh Graduate School of Public and International Affairs (GSPIA). His dissertation is entitled “An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of American Innovation: An Austrian Economics Perspective.”
Jeff maintains an active intellectual property law practice in the life sciences space. While counseling clients and working on his dissertation and other scholarship, Jeff remains active in the policy analysis and advocacy space. He currently serves as the President of the Association for American Innovation and a member and former Chair of the Public Policy Legal Task Force (PPLTF) for the Association of University of Technology Managers (AUTM).
Jeff has a bachelor’s degree chemical and biomedical engineering with concentrations in molecular biology and fermentation technology and from Carnegie Mellon. He also has a master’s degree in industrial administration (business) from Carnegie Mellon where he concentrated on international management, marketing and finance. He earned his law degree from the Duquesne University School of Law with a focus on intellectual property law.
Senior Partner, ACG Advocacy
Chris Israel is a Senior Partner at ACG Advocacy and is also the co-lead of the firm’s technology and intellectual property group.
He joined ACG in 2010, after serving in the George W. Bush Administration as Deputy Chief of
Staff to the Secretary of Commerce and later becoming the first U.S. International Intellectual
Property Enforcement Coordinator.
At ACG Advocacy, Chris works with a diverse range of clients including some of the largest and
most innovative companies in the world to support their efforts to build a policy environment in the U.S. that promotes and protects their investments in intellectual property. He has also
developed a unique focus leading a coalition of top venture capitalists and innovative startups to pursue a policy agenda that has led to improvements in tax policy, investments in R&D, and
strengthening patent protection.
Chris maintains a leadership profile working on IP and innovation issues and has been a frequent public speaker and has testified before Congress multiple times both as an Administration official and since he left public service. He was previously named one of the 50 “Most Influential People on IP” by Managing Intellectual Property magazine.
His international experience in government, particularly in working with China, has enabled him to successfully engage clients on global trade and technology matters ranging from the
negotiations of trade agreements, tariff policy, and engaging international organizations. His
client relationships have included automakers, global manufacturing companies, shipping
companies, and Chinese e-commerce and social media platforms seeking to better understand the U.S. market.
Chris’ experience leading coalitions has also included serving as Executive Director of the
musicFIRST Coalition during the lead-up to the passage of the landmark Music Modernization
Act. During this time he was named to Medium’s inaugural “Power 10” list of music policy
leaders.
Within ACG Advocacy, he provides guidance on the firm’s day-to-day interaction with all its
clients and helps lead ACG’s extensive policy research team. He has also launched the firm’s
podcast focused on policy trends and developments in Washington.
Earlier in his career, Chris worked on international policy issues at Time Warner where he was
part of a team that supported then-CEO, Gerald Levin, to develop the Global Business Dialogue on E-Commerce a ground-breaking global organization of CEOs from the U.S., EU, and Asia that developed industry best practices on matters such as online privacy, cross border data flows, and online taxation.
Prior to Time Warner, he served on Capitol Hill as a legislative aide to U.S. Representatives Jan
Meyers (R-KS) and Todd Tiahrt (R-KS).
Chris received his B.A. from the University of Kansas and an M.B.A. from The George
Washington University.
Partner and Co-Chair, Public Policy Group, Shook Hardy & Bacon LLP
Mark Behrens co-chairs Shook's Washington, DC-based Public Policy Practice Group and is a leading national expert on civil justice issues with over thirty years of experience. A substantial part of his practice is working to improve the civil litigation environment through state and federal legislation; in the courts through amicus curiae briefs; through legal scholarship and judicial education; and in the court of public opinion.
Mark is actively involved in civil justice reform efforts at the federal and state levels. He has testified before the U.S. Congress and most state legislatures on behalf of business and civil justice organizations. Mark also has an active amicus brief practice specializing in tort liability and civil justice issues. He has authored or co-authored over 150 amicus briefs in cases before the United States Supreme Court and federal and state appellate courts on behalf of business, civil justice, and defense lawyer organizations. In addition, Mark routinely files comments on behalf of business, civil justice, and defense lawyer organizations regarding potential changes to federal and state court rules. He chairs the International Association of Defense Counsel’s (IADC) Civil Justice Response Committee and serves on the Board of Directors of Lawyers for Civil Justice (LCJ).
Mark is a member of the American Law Institute (ALI). He received his J.D. in 1990 from Vanderbilt University Law School, where he was a member of the Vanderbilt Law Review. He received his B.A. in economics from the University of Wisconsin in 1987.
Former Chief Judge, U.S. Court of Federal Claims
Judge Braden was appointed to the United States Court of Federal Claims on July 14, 2003, by President George W. Bush, after being confirmed by unanimous consent of the United States Senate. She was sworn into office by Senator Jeff Sessions. Her investiture was conducted on October 24, 2003 by Justice Sandra Day O’Connor and Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg.
On January 28, 2015, Judge Braden was appointed by the American Law Institute as one of seven Judicial Advisors to the Restatement of the Law on Copyright. In 2013, Judge Braden was appointed to the Judges Special Committee of the American Intellectual Property Law Association and was named as Chair of the Intellectual Property Committee of the Advisory Council of the United States Court of Federal Claims. On March 23, 2012, Judge Braden received the Linn Inn Alliance Distinguished Service Medal at the New York Intellectual Property Lawyers Association Annual Dinner for her work with the American Inns of Court, dedicated to intellectual property law. On February 7, 2012, Judge Braden was appointed as Chair of the American Bar Association’s Section of Intellectual Property Law Task Force to consider how to more efficiently adjudicate "small" patent infringement cases. During 2010-2011, Judge Braden served as President of the Giles S. Rich American Inn of Court, which is affiliated with the United States Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit. She was recognized at a ceremony in the United States Supreme Court in November 2011, when she received the American Inns of Court’s Platinum Distinction Award. Judge Braden also served as a Member of the Editorial Board of the American Intellectual Property Law Association.
In July 2009, Judge Braden was appointed as a Member of the Standing Committee on Ethics and Professional Responsibility-Judges Advisory Committee to the American Bar Association, on which she served until 2012. On February 14, 2007, Judge Braden was elected as a Member of the American Law Institute and was active in drafting Restatement of Law Third, Restitution and Unjust Enrichment. On October 22, 2004, she was inducted as a Senior Fellow of the ABA’s Administrative Law and Regulatory Section by Justice O’Connor at a ceremony held at the United States Supreme Court.
Prior to joining the bench, Judge Braden litigated complex federal and administrative law cases in private practice in trial and appellate courts. In particular, her work in the intellectual property area received favorable notice in the Wall Street Journal, New York Times, National Law Journal, and the Journal of the American Bar Association, and was featured in Interfaces on Trial: Intellectual Property and Interoperability In The Global Software Industry. In 1996, Judge Braden was honored by the Computer Law Association for winning multiple decisions in the Eastern District of New York, the Eastern District of Texas, the Second Circuit, and a certified question to the Supreme Court of Texas in Computer Assocs. Int’l, Inc. v. Altai Inc., a landmark case that changed the application of copyright law to computer software. In 1998, she also won a companion case brought in France before the Cour de Appel de Paris.
In private practice, Judge Braden represented a wide variety of client interests before almost every major department and federal agency, testified before the United States Congress on a variety of matters, and was a principal lobbyist for the Emergency Oil and Steel Loan Guarantee Act of 1999, that established a $1 billion federal loan guarantee program to assist bankrupt and troubled steel mills and small oil companies.
Judge Braden received a B.A. degree (1970) and J. D. degree (1973) from Case Western Reserve University in Cleveland, Ohio. She also attended post graduate courses at the Harvard Law School in the summer of 1978.
James T. Jensen Endowed Professor for Transactional Law & Director of the Program on Intellectual Property and Technology Law, University of Utah S.J. Quinney College of Law
Jorge L. Contreras is a Distinguished University Professor, the James T. Jensen Endowed Professor for Transactional Law and Director of the Program on Intellectual Property and Technology Law. He teaches and researches in the areas of intellectual property, property law, technical standardization, antitrust and science policy. In 2020 he received the University of Utah's Distinguished Research Award and is an elected member of the American Law Institute. He has testified before the U.S. Senate and House Subcommittees on Intellectual Property, and was awarded the Rossman Memorial Award by the Patent & Trademark Office Society in 2022.
Professor Contreras has written or edited fourteen books and published more than 150 scholarly articles and chapters. His book, The Genome Defense: Inside the Epic Legal Battle to Determine Who Owns Your DNA (NY: Hachette/Algonquin, 2021), has been praised by the NY Times, Wall St. Journal, Nature and numerous other outlets, and was named "Best Patent Law Book of the Year" by the international IPKat blog. His scholarly articles have appeared in leading scientific, legal and policy journals including Science, Nature, NYU Law Review, Georgetown Law Journal, Iowa Law Review and Antitrust Law Journal. He has been quoted by media outlets around the world including the New York Times, Wall Street Journal, Economist, Bloomberg, Washington Post, Korea Times and has been featured on C-SPAN, NPR, PRI and BBC shows and a range of podcasts and online news programs.
Professor Contreras currently serves Co-Chair of the Interdisciplinary Division of the ABA's Section of Science & Technology Law and a member of the Advisory Board of the American Antitrust Institute. He has previously served as Co-Chair of the National Conference of Lawyers and Scientists, a member of the National Academy of Sciences (NAS) Committee on Intellectual Property Management in Standard-Setting Processes, the National Institutes of Health (NIH) Council of Councils, the Advisory Council of NIH's National Center for the Advancement of Translational Sciences (NCATS), the National Advisory Council for Human Genome Research, and the Intellectual Property Rights Policy Committee of the American National Standards Institute (ANSI). In 2021 he served as Chair of the Art Law Section of the Association of American Law Schools (AALS) and currently serves as Chair of the AALS Remedies Section.
Professor Contreras has previously taught at American University Washington College of Law and Washington University in St. Louis. Prior to entering academia he was a partner at the international law firm Wilmer Cutler Pickering Hale and Dorr LLP, where he practiced transactional and intellectual property law in Boston, London and Washington DC. He is a cum laude graduate of Harvard Law School (JD) and Rice University (BA, BSEE) and clerked for Chief Justice Thomas R. Philips of the Texas Supreme Court.
Vice President of Domestic Policy, National Association of Manufacturers
Charles Crain is the Vice President of Domestic Policy at the National Association of Manufacturers. In this role, he leads the association’s policy development and advocacy work on economic policy issues critical to the success of manufacturing in the United States, including tax, corporate governance, technology, health care, regulatory reform, and immigration. Prior to taking on the VP role, Charles led the NAM’s corporate finance policy portfolio, focused primarily on engagement with the Securities and Exchange Commission. He previously worked on Capitol Hill for members of the Senate Finance and House Financial Services Committees and was the Director of Tax and Financial Services Policy at the Biotechnology Innovation Organization.
Senior Counsel for Law and Policy, Committee for Justice
Jeff is a registered patent attorney and an intellectual property and innovation policy professional with a unique combination of training and real-world experience. Jeff is also currently a PhD candidate at the University of Pittsburgh Graduate School of Public and International Affairs (GSPIA). His dissertation is entitled “An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of American Innovation: An Austrian Economics Perspective.”
Jeff maintains an active intellectual property law practice in the life sciences space. While counseling clients and working on his dissertation and other scholarship, Jeff remains active in the policy analysis and advocacy space. He currently serves as the President of the Association for American Innovation and a member and former Chair of the Public Policy Legal Task Force (PPLTF) for the Association of University of Technology Managers (AUTM).
Jeff has a bachelor’s degree chemical and biomedical engineering with concentrations in molecular biology and fermentation technology and from Carnegie Mellon. He also has a master’s degree in industrial administration (business) from Carnegie Mellon where he concentrated on international management, marketing and finance. He earned his law degree from the Duquesne University School of Law with a focus on intellectual property law.
Senior Partner, ACG Advocacy
Chris Israel is a Senior Partner at ACG Advocacy and is also the co-lead of the firm’s technology and intellectual property group.
He joined ACG in 2010, after serving in the George W. Bush Administration as Deputy Chief of
Staff to the Secretary of Commerce and later becoming the first U.S. International Intellectual
Property Enforcement Coordinator.
At ACG Advocacy, Chris works with a diverse range of clients including some of the largest and
most innovative companies in the world to support their efforts to build a policy environment in the U.S. that promotes and protects their investments in intellectual property. He has also
developed a unique focus leading a coalition of top venture capitalists and innovative startups to pursue a policy agenda that has led to improvements in tax policy, investments in R&D, and
strengthening patent protection.
Chris maintains a leadership profile working on IP and innovation issues and has been a frequent public speaker and has testified before Congress multiple times both as an Administration official and since he left public service. He was previously named one of the 50 “Most Influential People on IP” by Managing Intellectual Property magazine.
His international experience in government, particularly in working with China, has enabled him to successfully engage clients on global trade and technology matters ranging from the
negotiations of trade agreements, tariff policy, and engaging international organizations. His
client relationships have included automakers, global manufacturing companies, shipping
companies, and Chinese e-commerce and social media platforms seeking to better understand the U.S. market.
Chris’ experience leading coalitions has also included serving as Executive Director of the
musicFIRST Coalition during the lead-up to the passage of the landmark Music Modernization
Act. During this time he was named to Medium’s inaugural “Power 10” list of music policy
leaders.
Within ACG Advocacy, he provides guidance on the firm’s day-to-day interaction with all its
clients and helps lead ACG’s extensive policy research team. He has also launched the firm’s
podcast focused on policy trends and developments in Washington.
Earlier in his career, Chris worked on international policy issues at Time Warner where he was
part of a team that supported then-CEO, Gerald Levin, to develop the Global Business Dialogue on E-Commerce a ground-breaking global organization of CEOs from the U.S., EU, and Asia that developed industry best practices on matters such as online privacy, cross border data flows, and online taxation.
Prior to Time Warner, he served on Capitol Hill as a legislative aide to U.S. Representatives Jan
Meyers (R-KS) and Todd Tiahrt (R-KS).
Chris received his B.A. from the University of Kansas and an M.B.A. from The George
Washington University.
NIST’s Proposed Framework for a New Approach to Bayh-Dole March-in: What You Need to Know
Susan G. Braden, Jorge L. Contreras, Charles Crain, Jeffrey E. Depp, Chris Israel
The National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) seeks comments on the Draft Interagency Guidance...
NIST’s Proposed Framework for a New Approach to Bayh-Dole March-in: What You Need to Know
Susan G. Braden, Jorge L. Contreras, Charles Crain, Jeffrey E. Depp, Chris Israel
The National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) seeks comments on the Draft Interagency Guidance...
NIST’s Proposed Framework for a New Approach to Bayh-Dole March-in: What You Need to Know
Topics
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This spring, the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia issued two preliminary injunctions...
2020 Civil Justice Update
Mark A. Behrens
Note from the Editor: The Federalist Society takes no positions on particular legal and public...