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Symposium Speakers

Patent Trolls

Harold Wegner - Featured Speaker
Joseph Berghammer - Panelist
Cole Fauver - Panelist
Peter Zura - Panelist

Electronic Data Discovery

Kenneth Withers - Featured Speaker
Andrea Augustine - Panelist
Nan Nolan - Panelist
Christopher Renk - Panelist

Piracy

Matthew Sag - Featured Speaker
Brett Frischmann - Panelist
Gregory Norrod - Panelist

Presenter Bios

Harold C. Wegner

Harold C. Wegner is a partner in the international law firm of Foley & Lardner LLP while continuing his teaching affiliation with the George Washington University Law School, where he was director of the Intellectual Property Law Program and professor of law. Prof. Wegner regularly operates in Japan, working with the firm's Tokyo office. A member of the firm's Intellectual Property Department, Prof. Wegner crafts strategies for multinational patent enforcement and management based upon current intelligence on global intellectual property law and practice as well as a cutting edge understanding of trends in patent case law. Prof. Wegner is also a member of the Public Affairs Practice Group and the Automotive and Nanotechnology Industry Teams.

Prof. Wegner has been a visiting professor at Tokyo University and altogether has spent more than five years in Europe and Asia, including positions as Mitarbeiter at the Max Planck Institute for Foreign and International Patent, Copyright and Competition Law and Kenshuin at the Kyoto University Law Faculty. For 30 years, Prof. Wegner has been actively involved in global patent law simplification and implementation of modernized patent systems, including missions on behalf of the George Washington University, the U.S. Department of State, and various other organizations to Beijing, Shanghai, Chongqing, Taipei, Geneva, Munich, London, Perugia, Paris, Amsterdam, the Hague, Tokyo, Osaka, Singapore, Kuala Lumpur, Rio and San Jose (Costa Rica).

Among his several hundred writings on intellectual property law, in 2003, West published the second edition of its widely used patent casebook - Adelman, Rader, Thomas & Wegner, "Patent Law." Prof. Wegner is currently working on his third book on Japanese patent law and practice. He has been named to the latest edition of both The International Who's Who of Patent Lawyers (2003) and Who's Who Legal- The International Who's Who of Business Lawyers (2004) - and in all previous editions of each directory.

Mr. Wegner was honored recently with the American Intellectual Property Law Association's President's Award for Outstanding Achievement for his long-time efforts in mentoring and in advancing diversity within the legal profession and the AIPLA.

Prof. Wegner holds degrees from Northwestern University (B.A.) and the Georgetown University Law Center (J.D.). He started his career as a Patent Examiner. In 1994, he merged his practice from the law firm he founded in 1980 into Foley & Lardner.

Kenneth Withers

Kenneth J. Withers is Managing Director of The Sedona Conference, an Arizona-based non-profit law and policy think-tank which has been on the forefront of issues involving technology, civil justice, intellectual property, and antitrust law. He has published several widely-distributed papers on electronic discovery, including "Computer-Based Discovery in Federal Civil Litigation," Federal Courts Law Review, 25 October 2000, http://www.fclr.org/2000fedctslrev2.htm and “Observations on the Sedona Principles,” with Hon. John Carroll, The Sedona Conference, April 2003, http://www.thesedonaconference.org/publications_html. In 2004 he published a preliminary survey of the proposed amendments to the Federal Rule of Civil Procedure, "Two Tiers and a Safe Harbor: Federal Rulemakers Grapple with Electronic Discovery," in the September 2004 issue of The Federal Lawyer. One year later, he published a follow-up article on the evolution of the proposed amendments as a result of the extensive public comment they received, entitled "They've Moved the Two Tiers and Filled In the Safe Harbor," in the November 2005 issue of The Federal Lawyer. From 1999 through 2005, Ken was a Senior Education Attorney at the Federal Judicial Center in Washington DC, where he developed Internet-based distance learning programs for the federal judiciary concentrating on issues of technology and the administration of justice. He contributed to several well-known FJC publications, including the Manual for Complex Litigation, Fourth Edition (2004), Effective Use of Courtroom Technology (2001), and the Civil Litigation Management Manual (2001). He is currently working on an electronic discovery handbooks for federal judges and continues to teach at the National Workshops for United States Magistrate Judges, sponsored by the FJC. Ken is a 1984 graduate of Northwestern University School of Law and a recipient of the Wigmore Key.

Matthew Sag

Matthew Sag is a visiting assistant professor Northwestern Law School and has just been appointed as an assistant professor at De Paul University, College of Law. Prior to his academic career, Professor Sag practiced as an intellectual property attorney in the United Kingdom with Arnold & Porter and in Silicon Valley, California with Skadden, Arps.

Professor Sag earned his law degree with honors from the prestigious Australian National University and clerked for Justice Paul Finn of the Federal Court of Australia. Professor Sag's research focuses on the effect of intellectual property laws on innovation and technology, with a particular focus on copyright, patent and antitrust law. He has recently published papers on the patent law implications of open source software and the fair use doctrine in copyright law, and his current research focuses on the application of law and economics analysis to copyright fair use.

Andrea M. Augustine

Andrea Augustine is senior counsel in the Chicago office of Foley & Lardner LLP. She is a member of the firm's Intellectual Property Department and its IP Litigation and Electronics Practice Groups, where she focuses her practice on intellectual property litigation and technology transactional work. Ms. Augustine has experience in all phases of IP litigation relating to patent infringement, validity and enforceability, copyright infringement, trade secret misappropriation, unfair competition, and interference with contractual relations for the software, electrical and mechanical arts.

Ms. Augustine regularly counsels clients in IP transactional matters including licensing options and strategies, joint development, service provider and confidentiality agreements as well as Internet-based agreements and policy statements. She is also licensed to practice before the U.S. Patent & Trademark Office and has experience in prosecuting patents in the areas of computer software and hardware including applications software, operating systems, computer networks, protocols and peripheral devices.

Prior to law school, Ms. Augustine worked for Reuters America as a senior programmer/analyst and Andersen Consulting as a software engineer.

Ms. Augustine received her J.D. from the University of Illinois College of Law in 1997, and earned her bachelor’s degree in electrical engineering from the University of Illinois College of Engineering in 1987.

Ms. Augustine is registered to practice before the Supreme Court of Illinois, the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Illinois, and the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office.

Joseph J. Berghammer

Joe Berghammer concentrates on litigation and counseling of patent, trademark and copyright matters and the preparation and prosecution of patent, trademark and copyright applications. Mr. Berghammer has a wide range of experience in technical arts including food science technology, electronic tracking and positioning, coatings and plastics processing, electronic commerce, polymer chemistry, signal processing, insurance products and services, paper and non-woven technologies, business methods, packaging, steel processing and products, coatings, biochemical products, consumer products, consumer displays and publishing. Mr. Berghammer has litigated numerous jury trials and preliminary injunction proceedings and is a specialist in his litigation practice in rocket docket jurisdictions.

Mr. Berghammer also assists clients in obtaining, maintaining, registering and assessing the value of patents, trademarks and copyrights. Mr. Berghammer has assisted numerous Fortune 200 companies in developing and augmenting their patent programs through the successful use of incentive programs and invention harvesting sessions. In his prosecution practice, Mr. Berghammer specializes in developing creative prosecution strategies for achieving clients’ business goals. These strategies include the use of early pre-grant publication procedures to obtain patent rights within as little as thirty days, maintaining continuing prosecution for important inventions, and devising strategies to limit clients' costs in creating and managing their trademark and patent portfolios.

Mr. Berghammer is an adjunct professor in intellectual property litigation at the Northwestern Law School and previously served as an adjunct professor at the Georgetown Law Center. He also serves as an Editor of the Federal Circuit Bar Journal and is the Chair-Elect of the Board of Directors of the Wisconsin Bar Association Intellectual Property Law Section. Mr. Berghammer is a founding member of the Intellectual Property Academy.

Mr. Berghammer earned his B.S. degree in Chemical Engineering from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, where he was awarded the Ford Foundation Scholarship for graduating as the top student in his class. Mr. Berghammer earned his J.D. degree from the Yale Law School, where he was the managing editor of the Yale Journal on Regulation. Upon graduation from Law School, Mr. Berghammer was a law clerk to Honorable Federal District Court Judge Terence Evans in the Eastern District of Wisconsin.

Mr. Berghammer practices in the Chicago office of Banner & Witcoff, Ltd.

Cole M. Fauver

Cole M. Fauver is a partner in the Minneapolis office of Robins, Kaplan, Miller & Ciresi L.L.P., designated as “2004 IP Litigation Department of the Year” by American Lawyer and IP Law and Business magazines. He has represented major companies in patent litigation including Honeywell, General Electric, Intergraph, and Medtronic Sofamor Danek, and also advises clients on IP management and licensing. He frequently speaks at programs for legal and business groups including the Patent Resources Group, Licensing Executives Society, Minnesota Institute for Legal Education, and the Intellectual Property Institute of Canada.

Mr. Fauver holds a bachelor’s degree in engineering from Brown University and is a 1988 graduate of Northwestern University School of Law.

Brett Frischmann

Brett Frischmann is an Assistant Professor at the Loyola University Chicago School of Law, where he teaches courses in intellectual property and Internet law. He is currently visiting at Syracuse University, College of Law. Professor Frischmann graduated Order of the Coif from the Georgetown University Law Center. After graduating from law school, he was an associate with the law firm of Wilmer, Cutler & Pickering in Washington, DC, where his practice focused on communications, e-commerce and intellectual property law. Prior to joining the Loyola faculty, Professor Frischmann clerked for the Honorable Fred I. Parker of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit. Professor Frischmann has published articles on a wide variety of topics, ranging from the law and economics of science and technology policy to the role of compliance institutions in international law. His recent work examines the relationships between infrastructural resources, property rights, commons, and spillovers.

Gregory Norrod

Gregory S. Norrod is a partner in Foley & Lardner LLP's Chicago office where he is a member of the Intellectual Property Department and IP Litigation Practice Group.

In his 16 years of practice, Mr. Norrod has engaged in a broad intellectual property litigation practice. Among his experiences are patent actions representing a major bank against claims of patent infringement for methods of obtaining cash for ATM patrons in excess of their daily limits; representing a major engine manufacturer against claims of patent infringement; representing a pharmaceutical research concern on its patents to polymorphic forms of a pharmaceutical compound and its resulting drug products; representing a major seed company in its claims that genetically engineered corn infringed on an existing patent; and representing a maker of DNA-sequencing machines in claims of patent infringement on computer-assisted sequencing technology.

Mr. Norrod has also litigated trade secrets cases defending a major inkjet printer maker on claims of trade secret misappropriation and patent ownership and inventorship; and defending an Internet portal supplier against claims of trade secrets and non-compete violations. Mr. Norrod has also litigated numerous trademark and unfair competition cases.

Mr. Norrod is a graduate of the Indiana University School of Law (J.D., cum laude, 1988), where he was an editor of the Indiana Law Journal and a member of the moot court team. He received his undergraduate degree from Indiana University (B.A., with honors, 1985). Mr. Norrod is a member of the American Bar Association, the Chicago Bar Association, the American Intellectual Property Law Association, and the Intellectual Property Law Association of Chicago.

Nan Nolan

Nan Nolan was appointed as a United States Magistrate Judge for the Northern District of Illinois in 1998. She received her bachelor's degree from Loyola University and her J.D. from DePaul University College of Law in Chicago. Judge Nolan began her legal career as a staff attorney for the Federal Defender Program in Chicago, then worked in private practice, thus gaining extensive experience in complex criminal cases. As a federal Magistrate Judge, she has written a number of opinions involving discovery issues relating to electronic evidence. Since her decision in Byers v. Illinois State Police, Judge Nolan has participated in a number of seminars concerning electronic discovery.

Christopher J. Renk

Chris Renk focuses his practice on litigating patent, trademark, copyright, trade secret, false advertising and unfair competition cases. Chris utilizes a value added approach in his litigation practice and believes that litigation goals should always be defined by each clients' business objectives. He is skilled in developing and implementing litigation strategies to fulfill those objectives.

Since joining the firm in 1988, Chris has successfully represented both plaintiffs and defendants as lead and co-counsel in jury trials, bench trials, and appeals. His cases have involved diverse subjects such as computer software, electrical controls, internet content delivery, medical and surgical devices, heat transfer, distilled spirits, contact lenses, flavor chemistry, athletic footwear and textiles processing.

In 2005, Chris was selected to the ”Top 100 Illinois Super Lawyers” list, featured in the May 2005 issue of Chicago magazine. The Super Lawyers list represents the top 5% of Illinois lawyers, as chosen through a peer balloting process involving 47,000 lawyers from across Illinois, and through a research and review panel organized by Law & Politics magazine. Law & Politics asked the attorneys to name the best lawyers they personally observed in action. The Top 100 list represents the lawyers who received the highest point total in the balloting process.

In addition to his active practice, Chris serves as an Adjunct Professor of Law at the Georgetown University Law Center where he teaches Patent Trial Practice and Persuasive Strategy and Practice in the High Technology Courtroom. He is a contributing author of the Patent Litigation Strategies Handbook, BNA 2000 and of Patent Litigation, PLI, 2001, and has spoken on various intellectual property issues at bar association meetings. Chris is also the author of several articles on intellectual property law, and has been a featured guest on WB's First Business, discussing intellectual property piracy in China.

Chris earned his engineering degree from Iowa State University in 1983. Prior to attending law school, he was a manufacturing research and development engineer at General Dynamics Corporation. He is a 1988 graduate of the University of Minnesota Law School, where he was a member of the Moot Court Board.

Chris is a registered patent attorney and is admitted to practice in Illinois, Minnesota, and the District of Columbia. He also is admitted to practice before the United States Supreme Court, the Court of the Appeals for the Federal Circuit and numerous federal district courts.

Mr. Renk practices in the Chicago office of Banner & Witcoff, Ltd.

Peter Zura

Peter Zura is an associate in Bell, Boyd & Lloyd LLC's Intellectual Property Department. He concentrates his practice in patent related issues, including litigation, prosecution, licensing, due diligence and counseling.