Makan Delrahim

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.

Explainer: Standard Essential Patents and National Security

By Christopher Borges Technology standards are a critical domain of international cooperation and competition in high technology. Standards create a common language for communication about technology and innovation, allowing firms to collaborate and develop interoperable products. At the same time, for some critical and emerging technologies such as telecommunications and artificial
Read More

Assessing the Patent and Trademark Office’s Inventorship Guidance for AI-Assisted Inventions

By Alexander Kersten As new applications of artificial intelligence (AI) become more sophisticated, AI tools are increasingly used to assist in the process of invention. However, given that inventorship is limited to natural persons under U.S. law, AI’s growing utilization has raised questions around whether AI-assisted inventions should receive patents,
Read More

Securing IP and the Future of Pandemic Preparedness

By Jeffrey Depp In December 2021, member states of the World Health Organization (WHO) at a Special Session of the World Health Assembly created an intergovernmental negotiating body (INB) to draft and negotiate a WHO convention, agreement, or other international instrument on pandemic prevention, preparedness, and response (“Pandemic Agreement”). The
Read More