Calendar of Events

Free and Open to the Public
Location: Vanderbilt University Law School (Google map of this location)

This panel discussion, sponsored by the Vanderbilt Intellectual Property Association, addresses the contentious issue of "patent trolls."

Panelists include:

- Colleen Chien, assistant professor of Law, Santa Clara Law, who is nationally known for her research and publications surrounding domestic and international patent law and policy issues. She has testified before Congress and the DOJ/FTC/PTO on patent issues, frequently lectures at national law conferences and has published several in-depth empirical studies, including of patent litigation, patent amicus briefs, compulsory licensing, non-practicing entities (NPE), and the secondary market for patents. She is an expert on the International Trade Commission (ITC), a topic on which she has authored several articles and co-authors a practice guide, The Section 337 Patent Investigation Management Guide. Prior to joining the Santa Clara University School of Law faculty in 2007, Professor Chien prosecuted patents at Fenwick & West in San Francisco and was a Fellow at the Stanford Center for Law and the Biosciences.

- Timothy Holbrooke, associate dean of faculty and professor of law, Emory Law, who has published widely on issues of patent law, international patent law and the patenting of human genes. His work appears in a variety of journals, including the Harvard Journal of Law and Technology, William and Mary Law Review, Washington University Law Review, SMU Law Review, Indiana Law Journal and twice in Science magazine. He is the co-author of Patent Litigation and Strategy (3d ed.) with Judge Kimberly A. Moore and Chief Judge Paul R. Michel (retired), both of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit.

- Julie Samuels, staff attorney and Mark Cuban Chair to Eliminate Stupid Patents at Electronic Frontier Foundation, who focuses on intellectual property issues. Before joining EFF, Samuels litigated IP and entertainment cases in Chicago at Loeb & Loeb and Sonnenschein Nath & Rosenthal. Prior to becoming a lawyer, Julie spent time as a legislative assistant at the Media Coalition in New York and as an assistant editor at the National Journal Group in D.C. She was also an intern at the National Center for Supercomputing Applications. Julie earned her J.D. from Vanderbilt and her B.S. in journalism from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign.