Speaking Engagements

Our attorneys are very active outside the office, giving presentations and sharing their expertise and experience with other professionals in a wide variety of industries. Below is a listing of upcoming and recent engagements.

Upcoming Presentations

Tom Carey will speak on June 14th at the 13th Annual Intellectual Property Law Conference sponsored by Massachusetts Continuing Legal Education. Tim Murphy will chair the event.

Lisa Fleming is on the committee celebrating Suffolk Law School's 25th anniversary. Events are planned on June 10, 11 and 12th.

Lisa Fleming is the co-chair for the 15th annual Health Law Advocates (HLA) Breakfast. This year's event is scheduled for November 18th.

Recent Presentations

On April 15, Meredith Ainbinder moderated a panel on business development at the Boston Bar Association.

Lisa Tittemore spoke at the Mass College of Arts regarding copyright law on March 31.

Jay Sandvos, co-chair of the BBA International IP Committee, hosted a brown bag lunch presentation on Wednesday, March 24 entitled Who Owns It?—Rights to Employee Inventions Around the World.

Jack Schecter gave a presentation on March 17 to the Suffolk Litigation American Inn of Court. The presentation was on the right of publicity and touched on several recent notable cases, including suits by Jim Brown and NCAA athletes regarding sports video game simulations by Electronic Arts and also the Lindsay Lohan case in New York regarding the e-Trade talking baby commercial that aired during the Super Bowl.

On February 4, Bruce Sunstein, Steve Saunders and Lisa Tittemore spoke at an event entitled "Patent Monetization: Strategic Choices and How to Implement Them." The seminar, co-sponsored with Yet2.com, was held in the Sunstein office.

Bob Asher led a discussion on Patent Reexamination at the AIPLA Mid-WInter Institute held in La Quinta, CA from January 27-30.

Peter Karol discussed the first amendment v. fair use implications of a New York judge's recent ban on an unauthorized sequel to "Catcher in the Rye," on October 30, 2009.

Bruce Sunstein and Tim Murphy spoke at a program entitled "Intellectual Property - MCLE Basics Plus: Copyright, Trademark, Trade Secret and Patent Law." on October 22/23, 2009.

Alex Smolenski spoke at the BBA recently explaining recent important changes in divisional patent rules in the European Patent Office.

Robert Asher recently hosted a Webinar for the BPLA entitled "The Inside Scoop on Accelerated Examination." His guest was Jack Harvey who oversees the accelerated examination program at the USPTO.

Bruce Sunstein spoke at the Respiratory Drug Discovery & Development Conference in Philadelphia on June 25, 2009. His talk was titled, "Using Patents Strategically In Respiratory Product Lifecycle Management." For more details go to http://www.iqpc.com/ShowEvent.aspx?id=181220&langtype=1033.

Tim Murphy chaired MCLE's IP Law Conference on June 10, 2009. This year's keynote speaker was William F. Patry, Senior Copyright Counsel at Google Inc. and author of Patry on Copyright and other esteemed copyright treatises.

Lisa Tittemore chaired a panel discussion featuring the Federal Magistrate Judges of the District of Massachusetts on May 5, 2009. The event, "Meet The Magistrate Judges" took place at the John Joseph Moakley Federal Courthouse. The event was co-sponsored by the Massachusetts Chapter of the Federal Bar Association and the Boston Bar Association.

Lisa M. Tittemore spoke regarding "reasonable royalites" at the American Intellectual Property Law Association Mid-Winter Institute in Miami on January 30, 2009.

Jakub Michna spoke at a Boston Patent Law Association event "The Bounds of Patent Eligibility in the Aftermath of Bilski." The event was held on January 13. For more information go to www.bpla.org.

Nicole Rizzo Smith participated in a Trademark Speaker Panel at the New England School of Law.

A number of patent attorneys from Sunstein held an IEEE two day seminar entitled "How to Choose the Best Ways to Protect your Firm's Innovative Technologies. A Patent Primer for Engineering Managers and Engineers." The speakers included John Stickevers, Alex Smolenski, George Jakobsche, Tom Tuytschaevers, Yakov Sidorin and David Blau.

Two of our attorneys spoke at a recent seminar on international licensing that focused on pharmaceutical company transactions. Bruce Sunstein analyzed the antitrust limitations on patent licenses. Joel Leeman discussed the arbitration of international disputes, including those involving parties to a license.

Lisa M. Tittemore and Keith E. Toms held a Webinar hosted by Thompson CompuMark on November 5, 2008.  The program was entitled "Pharmaceutical Trademark Prosecution and the Changing Landscape of FDA Drug Name Review." 

Jakub Michna was a speaker at a seminar entitled "In re Bilski: How will the Federal Circuit Define the Bounds of Patentability?," organized by the Boston Patent Law Association on October 16, 2008.

John Stickevers chaired a BPLA presentation on the In re Bilski case on October 16, 2008. See the BPLA website for more information.

John Stickevers presented at the Copyright in the Digital Age MCLE seminar on October 6, 2008.

On October 6, 2008, Lisa Tittemore co-chaired the program "Copyright in the Digital Age," a CLE program sponsored by Massachusetts Continuing Legal Education (MCLE). The speakers addressed current developments in copyright law with a focus on issues relating to the Internet, digital media, computer software, and secondary liability for user-generated content. The course was held at the MCLE Conference Center.

Lisa Tittemore co-chaired "Making the Federal Case: Winning Strategies for Trying a Civil Case to a Jury," a Boston Bar Association CLE program.

Edward Dailey and Courtney Quish spoke at the Intellectual Property Law Conference 2008, on June 18, 2008. They addressed "Damages in Lanham Act Cases: Proving deception and causation, knocking down the damages barrier, and chronicling The HipSaver Company Inc v. J.T.Posey Company, 497 F. Supp. 3d 96 (D. Mass. 2007)."

Tim Murphy Chaired MCLE's 11th Annual Intelluctual Property Law Conference 2008 on June 18, 2008.

Nicole Rizzo Smith was on a BPLA panel at Suffolk Law School on April 1, 2008 discussing "Careers in Intellectual Property." She joined other attorneys to discuss careers and experiences practicing in the IP field.

On March 18, 2008, Meredith Ainbinder was a panelist at the Boston College Law School Intellectual Property and Technology Forum's Annual Career Panel, providing law students advice about starting a career in intellectual property law.

Lisa Tittemore was a speaker at the Boston Bar Association's Intellectual Property Year in Review.  She spoke on key federal court trademark decisions in 2007. 

Yakov Sidorin co-chaired a conference entitled "Integrated Optics: Devices, Material and Technologies XII" at the SPIE Phontonics West sysposum in San Jose, California. At that same conference he also chaired a session entitled "Integration Concepts."

Robert Asher presented "Sophisticated Use of Reexamination and Reissue" to the patent group of Corning Incorporated at its offices in New York in October, 2007.

Bruce Sunstein was a guest speaker at a day-long conference: "New Media and the Marketplace of Ideas" on October 26, 2007 on the Boston University campus.

Jay Sandvos spoke to the MIT Alumni Club of Maine on October 25, 2007.

Bruce Sunstein spoke at the IDSA Boston chapter meeting on October 4, 2007. The event took place in the auditorium at Wentworth Institute of Technology. Bruce discussed patents in relationship to the design community.

Bruce Sunstein spoke on September 25, 2007 at a Boston Patent Law Association Seminar: "Rule Changes for Continued Examination and Claims Practice." 

Steven Saunders co-chaired an MCLE program entitled "Hot Topics in Intellectual Property for the Business Lawyer" on September 11, 2007 at the MCLE Conference Center.

Lisa Tittemore and co-chair Eileen Herlihy moderated a Boston Bar Association CLE program on June 7, 2007, entitled "U.S. Supreme Court 2006-2007: Active Battleground for Patent Law. Recent Cases Before the Court."  The program provided an in-depth analysis of important patent law cases before the Supreme Court this year by some of Boston’s most experienced patent practitioners, including Bruce Sunstein, spoke on "Medimmune, Inc. v. Genentech, Inc. and licensee estoppel." 

On June 13, 2007, Lisa Tittemore spoke on "Copyright and User Generated Content" as a faculty member of the MCLE "Intellectual Property Law Conference 2007" at the MCLE Conference Center.

On May 10, 2007, Lisa Tittemore moderated a panel of experienced patent litigators on "Litigation Strategies and Tactics" as part of the Spring Meeting of the American Intellectual Property Law Association (AIPLA) at the Seaport Hotel and World Trade Center in Boston. The panel included discussion of topics such as "trolling" for a friendly forum, patent reexamination as tactical matter, leveraging foreign counterpart activity, and logistics in multi-party litigation.

Lisa Fleming co-chaired a panel discussion on April 25, 2007 entitled "Litigating Closely-Held Corporation Disputes in Massachusetts" at the Boston Bar Association Conference Center. Justin Bernold was a panelist on the program. 

Robert Asher spoke at the American Intellectual Property Law Association (AIPLA) Mid-Winter Institute in New Orleans on January 24-27, 2007. He discussed "Hot Topics in Patent Litigation," including injunctive relief and reexaminations.

Past Presentations

Robert O'Reilly, our Litigation Support Specialist, shared tips on gathering, processing, reviewing and producing electronic information on November 30, 2006 at the Boston Bar Association. He was part of a presentation entitled "Update on Electronic Discovery."

Bruce Sunstein spoke at the AIPLA 2006 Annual Meeting, October 19-21, 2006 in Washington, D.C. He presented a paper entitled "Harnessing Collaborative Web Based Technology To Bring Prior Art to the Patent Process - An Inventor's Perspective."

John Stickevers co-chaired a seminar on patent valuation on March 16, 2006 at the Boston Patent Law Association.

On March 10, 2006, Tim Murphy acted as a judge for students competing in AIPLA's Giles S. Rich Moot Court Competition. The semifinal rounds were held at the Suffolk Law School. The competition concerned a hypothetical appeal to the Federal Circuit Court of Appeals by an individual inventor whose frisbee-like device was found to infringe a patent held by a large toy company.

Lisa Tittemore was the Chair of the MCLE "Copyright Basics Plus!" seminar on January 18, 2006, at the MCLE Conference Center in Boston. The seminar featured five presentations by experienced IP practitioners and covered topics from "what copyright protects" to "strategies for the protection of computer software" and "copyright litigation basics".

Lisa Tittemore was Co-Chair of a "standing room only" symposium entitled "The U.S. Patent System: Working or Broken and Who Decides?" on November 16, 2005, at the Boston Bar Association, 16 Beacon Street, Boston (co-sponsored by the Boston Patent Law Association). A distinguished panel of speakers, including Dr. Adam Jaffe, Sacha Pfeiffer of the Boston Globe, Dr. Robert Rines, James Toupin, General Counsel of the USPTO, and Jack Turner of MIT, discussed recent criticisms of the U.S. patent system and debated whether it is