The First Three Meetings Will Take Place In San Jose, California, On February 18, 2005 Chicago, Illinois On Patents

ftc.gov, Sep 13, 2005

In February and March 2005, the Federal Trade Commission, the National Academies’ Board on Science, Technology, and Economic Policy (STEP), and the American Intellectual Property Law Association (AIPLA) will co-sponsor a nationwide series of town meetings on patent reform. The first three meetings will take place in San Jose, California, on February 18, 2005; Chicago, Illinois, on March 4, 2005; and Boston, Massachusetts, on March 18, 2005. They will bring together government officials, business representatives, independent inventors, scholars, lawyers, and other members of the patent community to discuss the most significant recommendations for patent reform made by the FTC, the National Academies’ STEP Board, and the AIPLA.

Keynote speakers are Will Poole, Senior Vice President, Microsoft, in San Jose; Kenneth Dam, former Deputy Secretary of the Department of the Treasury and now a professor at the University of Chicago, in Chicago; and David Boloker, Chief Technology Officer for Emerging Technology at the IBM Software Group and Cavan Redmond, Executive Vice President and General Manager of the BioPharma Business Unit at Wyeth Pharmaceuticals, in Boston. The Honorable Jon Dudas, Undersecretary and Director, United States Patent and Trademark Office, will be the luncheon speaker at all three events. The series will conclude with a meeting in Washington, D.C., on June 9, 2005, with an agenda to be determined later.

Agendas for the February and March 2005 town meetings are attached. Sessions will begin with brief explanations of the proposed changes, followed by opportunities for stakeholders in the patent system to raise and discuss the pros and cons of, and possible improvements to, those proposals.