By Marketa Trimble, Associate Professor of Law
On Nov. 14, 2014, the William S. Boyd School of Law co-sponsored and hosted the annual Intellectual Property Law Conference of the Intellectual Property Law Section of the State Bar of Nevada. This is the second year the Law School has hosted the Conference, which offers an excellent opportunity for Section members, the Boyd faculty, and Boyd students to discuss current issues in intellectual property law and network with colleagues sharing common interests.
The program began with two morning sessions presenting an in-depth look at selected problems of franchising and intellectual property licensing. Matthew J. Kreutzer (Howard & Howard, Las Vegas, NV) shared his expertise in franchising, which has evolved over his more than 15 years of working with individuals and companies on franchising relationships. Paul C. Jorgensen (The Jorgensen Law Firm, Washington, D.C.) gave an overview of major issues in licensing and provided valuable practice tips related to drafting and negotiating intellectual property licenses.
The first afternoon session was divided into two tracks. Track One focused on copyright and trademark law; Professor Mary LaFrance and Associate Professor Marketa Trimble, both Boyd faculty members, reviewed recent and current developments in trademark and copyright law from the past year, including U.S. Supreme Court 2014 decisions in these areas. Professor Justin Hughes (Loyola Law School, Los Angeles, CA) spoke on enforcement of intellectual property rights on the Internet and provided a comparative perspective that is useful in an era of Internet and other cross-border intellectual property right disputes. Track Two concentrated on patent law. Herbert R. Schulze (Holland & Hart, Reno, NV) covered the historical development of the law on patentable subject matter and discussed its current trajectory following the heavily criticized June 2014 U.S. Supreme Court decision in Alice Corp. v. CLS Bank Int’l. Juergen Krause-Polstorff (San Jose, CA) addressed current issues in functional claiming, and David C. Van Dyke (Howard & Howard, Chicago, IL) spoke on patent litigation concerning standard essential patents, fair, reasonable, and non-discriminatory licensing terms that owners of such patents must offer, and obligations stemming from participation in standard-setting organizations.
The second afternoon session covered a variety of current issues in entertainment law. The panel chair, Ryan R. Gile (Weide & Miller, Ltd., Las Vegas, NV), invited a group of highly experienced local attorneys who generously shared cautionary tales and practice tips spanning privacy law, the right of publicity, employment law, Internet domain name law, professional responsibility, and other areas. The panelists were Anat Levy (Beverly Hills, CA, and Las Vegas, NV), Linda Norcross (‘04, Howard & Howard, Las Vegas, NV), Steven Pacitti (Feldmann Nagel, LLC, Las Vegas, NV), and Kimberly Stein (Howard & Howard, Las Vegas, NV).
The William S. Boyd School of Law is proud to be a co-sponsor of the annual Conference of the Intellectual Property Law Section; Boyd co-sponsorship is one of the many ways the law school connects with the State Bar of Nevada.
