Innovation Policy and the Role of Standards, IP, and Antitrust

Andrei Iancu was under secretary of commerce for intellectual property and director of the United States Patent and Trademark Office, a position to which he was confirmed unanimously by the Senate. In this role, Mr. Iancu led an agency with approximately 13,000 employees and an annual budget of over $3.5 billion. He was also the principal adviser in the administration on domestic and international intellectual property (IP) policy matters. Mr. Iancu is now a partner at Irell & Manella, where he represents clients on IP matters. He also co-founded earlier this year the Renewing American Innovation Project at the bipartisan Center for Strategic and International Studies. Mr. Iancu has also taught patent law at the UCLA School of Law. Earlier in his career, he was an engineer at Hughes Aircraft Company.

Makan Delrahim is Adjunct Lecturer in Law at the University of Pennsylvania and former Assistant Attorney General for the Antitrust Division, United States Department of Justice.  Mr. Delrahim previously served as Deputy Assistant to the President and Deputy White House Counsel.  Mr. Delrahim’s rich antitrust background covers the full range of industries, issues, and institutions touched upon by the work of the Antitrust Division.  He is a former partner in the Los Angeles office of a national law firm.  He served in the Antitrust Division from 2003 to 2005 as a Deputy Assistant Attorney General, overseeing the Appellate, Foreign Commerce, and Legal Policy sections.  During that time, he played an integral role in building the Antitrust Division’s engagement with its international counterparts and was involved in civil and criminal matters.  He has served on the Attorney General’s Task Force on Intellectual Property and as Chairman of the Merger Working Group of the International Competition Network.  Mr. Delrahim was also as a Commissioner on the Antitrust Modernization Commission from 2004 to 2007.  Earlier in his career, Mr. Delrahim served as antitrust counsel, and later as the Staff Director and Chief Counsel of the U.S. Senate Judiciary Committee.

Dr. Walter Copan is cofounder of the Renewing American Innovation Project at the Center for Strategic and International Studies. Currently, he serves as vice president for research and technology transfer at the Colorado School of Mines in Golden, Colorado. He previously served as under secretary of commerce for standards and technology and 16th director of the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST), a position to which he was confirmed unanimously by the Senate. He served as the U.S. principal presidential adviser on standards policy and technology matters and provided high-level oversight and strategic leadership for NIST, a world-leading science and technology institute. Under his widely acclaimed leadership, he spearheaded streamlining and modernization of foundational policies and practices for innovation and technology transfer arising from federally funded research to benefit the economy and society. Dr. Copan is a distinguished leader with wide-ranging experience spanning large company, entrepreneurial tech start-up, U.S. government, nonprofit, and other public sector settings. For the U.S. government, he also served with two of the Department of Energy national laboratories: the National Renewable Energy Laboratory and Brookhaven National Laboratory. He is a sought-after speaker and thought leader on matters of science and technology, strategy, entrepreneurship, technology commercialization, intellectual property, and innovation. Dr. Copan began his career in research and development and business leadership at the Lubrizol Corporation. He earned undergraduate degrees and his PhD in physical chemistry from Case Western Reserve University and holds a certificate in advanced business administration studies at Harvard Business School. He was named 2020 laboratory director of the year by the U.S. Federal Laboratory Consortium. The Association of University Technology Managers (AUTM) recognized Dr. Copan with its 2021 Bayh-Dole Award for contributions to innovation and technology transfer.

David J. Kappos is a partner at Cravath.  He is a leader in the field of intellectual property, including IP management and strategy, the development of global IP norms, laws and practices as well as commercialization and enforcement of innovation-based assets.  From 2009 to 2013, Mr. Kappos served as Under Secretary of Commerce and Director of the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO).  In that role, he advised the President, the Secretary of Commerce and the Administration on IP policy matters.  Mr. Kappos led the Agency in dramatically reengineering its entire management and operational systems and its engagement with the global innovation community.  He was instrumental in achieving the greatest legislative reform of the U.S. patent system in generations through passage and implementation of the Leahy‑Smith America Invents Act, signed into law by President Obama in September 2011.

Prior to leading the USPTO, Mr. Kappos held several executive posts in the legal department of IBM, the world’s largest patent holder.  From 2003 to 2009, he served as the company’s chief intellectual property lawyer.  In that capacity, he managed global intellectual property activities for IBM, including all aspects of patent, trademark, copyright and trade secret protection and exploitation.  During his more than 25 years at IBM, he also served in a variety of other roles including litigation counsel and Asia Pacific IP counsel, where he led all aspects of IP protection, including licensing, transactions support and M&A activity for the Asia/Pacific region.