Traditional Knowledge Symposium 2007

Schedule
Speaker Bios
Conference Co-Sponsors

Conference Schedule

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Speaker Bios

Panel 1: Global Legislative Efforts on Protection for Traditional Knowledge and Cultural Expressions

Moderator: Director  Elizabeth Chien-Hale,  Institute for Intellectual Property in Asia

Elizabeth  Chien-Hale is a registered U.S.  patent attorney specializing in patent and other forms of intellectual property  protection. She is bilingual in Chinese and English, and concentrate on patent  issues in both the United States  and China.

Prior  to consulting, she headed the patent practice at Baker & McKenzie’s Hong Kong office. She also worked for other law firms in Silicon Valley including Wilson Sonsini Goodrich &  Rosati, and Fish & Richardson. She was also a visiting attorney  at several foreign law firms over the years.

Ms. Chien-Hale has substantial technical knowledge in a variety of  electrical and electro-mechanical arts, having drafted and prosecuted patent  applications in telecommunication, software, wireless and Internet-enabled  devices, language-based data processing, semiconductor processing and  computer-related mechanical devices. She was also involved in a number of intellectual property  litigation cases, including cases in the International Trade Commission and the U.S. District Court, relating to patent infringements and trade secrets  violation.

Ms.  Chien-Hale has lectured and written, in both English and Chinese, on the topics of international intellectual property protection and the Chinese  constitutional structure. She was a research scholar at the College of Law  of the Peking University  and taught at the graduate school of the Chinese Academy  of Social Sciences in 1995. She is a registered patent attorney before the U.S.  Patent and Trademark Office, and is licensed to practice in the states of California, Hawaii, and  the District of Columbia.  She is also admitted to the Bar of the U.S. Supreme Court. Her name has been  included in the Who’s Who in America,  Who’s Who in American Law, and Who’s Who in American Women.

Ms. Chien-Hale is also an active participant in  professional organizations. For  the American Bar Association, she currently co-chairs the Committee on  International Patent Treaties and Laws for the Intellectual Property Law  Section, and co-chairs the Joint Task Force between the Intellectual Property Law  Section and the International Law Section on PRC Intellectual Property Laws  Amendments. She is also a co-chair of the Intellectual Property Law Interest  Group and the vice-chair of the Pacific Rim Interest Group of the American  Society of International Law.

Panelist: Professor Deepa Badrinarayana,  Chapman University Law School;  Visiting Scholar, Center for Global Legal Problems at Columbia University Law School

Deepa Badrinarayana received a bachelors  degree in law, with honors, from the National Law School of India University in  Bangalore, and  both an LL.M. and S.J.D. in Environmental Law from Pace University School of  Law. Dr. Badrinarayana was a Visiting Scholar at the Center for Global Legal  Problems at Columbia University Law  School, and she has served as a  consultant to the United Nations Global Compact in New York and as a research officer for the World Bank Environmental  Capacity-Building Project in Bangalore.  Professor Badrinarayana teaches International Trade Law, International  Intellectual Property Law, and seminars in International Energy Security and  Climate Change, and International Regulation and Corporate Social  Responsibility. Deepa Badrinarayana received a bachelors  degree in law, with honors, from the National Law School of India University in  Bangalore, and  both an LL.M. and S.J.D. in Environmental Law from Pace University School of  Law. Dr. Badrinarayana was a Visiting Scholar at the Center for Global Legal  Problems at Columbia University Law  School, and she has served as a  consultant to the United Nations Global Compact in New York and as a research officer for the World Bank Environmental  Capacity-Building Project in Bangalore.  Professor Badrinarayana teaches International Trade Law, International  Intellectual Property Law, and seminars in International Energy Security and  Climate Change, and International Regulation and Corporate Social  Responsibility.

Panelist: Ms. Lin Sun-Hoffman, Ph.D., Senior Patent  Attorney, Applied Biosystems

She’s  a senior patent attorney from Applied Biosystems, where she provides  intellectual property counseling and research tool products. Previously she  worked at Celera Genomics managing patent preparation and prosecution on gene  patents, as well as other gene-related diagnostic and therapeutic patents. She  also worked as a patent examiner at USPTO in the biopharmaceutical group, and  she’s here today to enlighten us about the private sector side of this  equation.

Panelist: Shantanu Basu, Of Counsel, Morrison Foerster

Shantanu Basu is  Of Counsel in the Palo Alto  office. He received his B.Sc. with Honors in Chemistry and M.Sc. in  Biochemistry from Calcutta University in India,  M.S. with distinction in Molecular Biology and Ph.D. in Molecular Biology from  Albert Einstein College of Medicine in New York,  and J.D. from Fordham University School of Law in New York. He was a recipient of the Thomas  F. Reddy, Jr. award in Intellectual Property from Fordham Law School. As a Junior  Fellow of the American Cancer Society and later as a Fellow of the Leukemia  Society of America, he carried out post-doctoral research in the laboratory of  Dr. Harold Varmus at the University of  California in San Francisco in the area of mammalian  retroviruses including MLV and HIV. His research included studies on the mechanisms  of action and inhibitors of the reverse transcriptase and integrase functions  of the human immunodeficiency virus. He has co-authored several publications in  the areas of protein chemistry, molecular biology, retrovirology, and gene  therapy. Prior to joining Morrison & Foerster, Dr. Basu was an associate at  Wilson Sonsini Goodrich and Rosati of Palo Alto, California where he prosecuted  patents in the areas of biotechnology, e-commerce, and medical devices. Dr.  Basu is a member of the State Bars of California,  New York, and New Jersey and is registered to practice  before the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office. His practice is focused on  biotechnology and includes extensive experience in U.S. and foreign patent prosecution  on technology related to cancer, infectious diseases, nanobiotechnology,  biochips, genomics, diagnostics, therapeutics, vaccines, and pharmaceuticals.  He has extensive experience in patent interferences, re-examinations, and  reissues. He has participated in several patent litigations including cases  involving patents on microarrays and HIV diagnostics, vaccines and therapy. He  is a member of the American Bar Association, American Intellectual Property Law  Association, California State Bar Association and the American Association for  Advancement in Science.

Panelist: Gustavo de Freitas Moras, Dannemann Siemsen

Panel 2: Indigenous Rights to Traditional Knowledge and Cultural Expressions

Moderator: Valerie Phillips, University  of Tulsa College of Law

Professor Phillips  received her J.D. from the University  of California at Berkeley  in 1986 after graduating from Wellesley College in 1983 with  honors in political science. Her research agenda is cross-disciplinary but is  unified with the theme of making room for indigenous peoples in an overly  westernized world. It encompasses international law, decolonization, law and  institutional economics, indigenous economic theory and business development,  intellectual property/indigenous cultural property and traditional knowledge,  and black/red relationships. She teaches business associations, a seminar on  White Collar Crime, and civil procedure. Her most recent publication is Parallel Worlds: A Sideways  Approach to Promoting Indigenous-Nonindigenous Trade and Sustainable  Development, appearing in the Michigan State University Journal of  International Law. She is currently working on a manuscript that articulates a  theory of indigenous economics.

Panelist: Professor Aroha Te Pareake Mead, Senior Lecturer in  Maori Business, University of Victoria, New Zealand

Aroha  is a Senior Lecturer in Maori Business. She is also a Senior Research Fellow  with the Centre of Environmental Law at Macquarie  University in Sydney.

Aroha serves on a  number of Advisory committees including, Te Pae Whakawairua (Archives New  Zealand), Advisory Group on Maori & Genetic Information (ESR),  International Experts Group for the UNU Traditional Knowledge Centre,  Indigenous Advisory Panel for Terralingua, and  the Steering Group for the High Conservation Value  Resource Network.

Aroha co-chairs  ‘Call of the Earth Llamado de la Tierra’, an international initiative on  indigenous intellectual property policy hosted at the United Nations University  Institute of Advanced Studies in Yokohama, Japan and she is serving a second term on the Governing Council  of the IUCN World Conservation Union. Within  the IUCN, Aroha is also Co-Chair of the Theme on Culture & Conservation  within the Commission on Economic, Environmental & Social Policy, is a  member of the World Commission on Protected Areas and the  IUCN/ICMM Working Group on Extractive Industries & Biodiversity.

Panelist: Professor Angela Riley, Irving D. Florence Rosenberg Professor of Law, Southwestern  Law School

Within only five  years of graduating from law school, Angela Riley had already been appointed as  an attorney, a law professor and a justice. A veteran litigator when she joined  Southwestern’s full-time faculty in 2003, she was also named that year as a  Justice of the Supreme Court of the Citizen Potawatomi Nation of Oklahoma, the court that  hears all civil and criminal appeals arising from the Tribal District Court.  She also holds the distinction of being the first female and youngest justice  ever to serve on the Court.

A recipient of the  Wilfred Bibb Scholarship awarded by the Citizen Potawatomi Nation, and a former  co-chair of the Native American Law Students Association at Harvard, Professor  Riley served as a judicial clerk to Chief Judge Terry Kern of the Northern  District of Oklahoma in Tulsa.  She then spent a few years in Los  Angeles as a litigation associate with the law firms  of Katten Muchin Zavis, and Quinn Emanuel Urquhart Oliver & Hedges.

Professor Riley  left private practice in 2002 to serve as a Teaching Scholar at the Santa Clara  University School of Law where she taught Race and Law and coordinated programs  on race-related issues for the Center for Social Justice and Public Interest.

Professor Riley  has focused her recent scholarship and presentations on protection of Native  American intellectual and cultural property such as songs, ceremonies, sacred  objects and human remains, and other legal issues related to rights of  indigenous communities. She sees her writing, as “a form of advocacy to  advance the issues I care about.” Professor Riley has participated as  moderator or panelist on rights of indigenous peoples and social justice law issues  in forums around the country including the Colorado Indian Bar Association, the  Colorado Intellectual Property Bar Association, the Annual Tribal Law and  Governance Conference (University of Kansas), and the Native Nations Law and  Policy Center (University of California, Los Angeles), among others. She also  serves on the board of directors of Stop Prisoner Rape.

Panelist: Suzan Shown Harjo, President, The Morning Star  Institute

Suzan Shown Harjo (Cheyenne & Hodulgee  Muscogee) is a poet, writer, lecturer, curator and policy advocate, who has  helped Native Peoples recover more than one million acres of land and numerous  sacred places. She has developed key federal Indian law since 1975, including  the most important national policy advances in the modern era for the  protection of Native American cultures and arts, including the 1996 Executive  Order on Indian Sacred Sites, the 1990 Native American Graves Protection and  Repatriation Act, the 1989 National Museum of the American Indian Act and the  1978 American Indian Religious Freedom Act.

Ms. Harjo is President and Executive Director of The Morning Star Institute, a  national Native rights organization founded in 1984 for Native Peoples’  traditional and cultural advocacy, arts promotion and research. A leader in  cultural property protection and stereotype busting, Morning Star sponsors the  Just Good Sports project, organizes the National Day of Prayer to Protect  Native American Sacred Places and coordinated The 1992 Alliance (1990-1993).  Ms. Harjo is one of seven prominent Native people who filed the 1992 landmark  lawsuit, Harjo et al v. Pro Football, Inc., regarding the name of the Washington football  team. They won in 1999, when a three-judge panel unanimously decided to cancel  federal trademark protections for the team’s name. The District Court reversed  their victory in 2003; the case is now before the U.S. Court of Appeals. Her  essay, Fighting Name-Calling: Challenging ‘Redskins’ in Court, is published  in Team Spirits: The Native American Mascots Controversy (University of Nebraska  Press, 2001). She also wrote Just Good Sports:  The Impact of ‘Native’ References in Sports on Native Youth and What Some  Decolonizers Have Done About It,’ a chapter in For Indigenous Eyes Only: A  Decolonization Handbook (SAR Press, 2005).

Panelist: Alberto Saldamundo, General Counsel, International Indian Treaty Council

Panel 3: IP Protection for Traditional Knowledge and Cultural Expressions

Moderator: Professor Jiri Toman, Santa Clara University School of Law

Professor Toman has taught at the School  of Economics and School  of Law at Charles  University in Prague. From 1969 until June 1998, he was  director of the Henry Dunant Institute in Geneva,  the research and training center of the International Red Cross. He also taught  at the University of Geneva and was a visiting professor at Santa Clara University,  George Washington University,  and Université de Franche-Compte in Besançon.

Professor Toman is a member of the  editorial boards of several journals and is a member of several international  associations. Since 1994, he has been a foreign member (academician) of the Russian Academy of Natural Sciences.

Panelist: Molly Torsen, WIPO Consultant

Molly began  working for IIPI as a Program Attorney in late 2005, during which time she  developed and implemented projects, conferences and other activities for the  Institute.  As Vice President, Molly oversees the day-to-day operations of  IIPI, ranging from managing IIPI’s projects developed within the scope of its  agreements with the USPTO and with development agencies to catalyzing interest  in intellectual property law from individuals and stakeholders whose knowledge  of or access to information on IP is limited.

Prior to joining IIPI, Molly undertook a legal fellowship at the Arts and  Humanities Research Council Research Centre for Studies in Intellectual  Property and Information Technology Law in Edinburgh, Scotland,  where she focused her research on international copyright laws as they relate  to contemporary art. Molly has also done legal translation from French to English in affiliation with the International Foundation for Art Research and  has collaborated in legal research projects at the World Intellectual Property  Organization and at Microsoft. Other areas of Molly’s academic and policy  interest include geographical indications, IP and antitrust, IP and economics,  copyright protection for traditional cultural expressions and for new forms of  media, as well as international copyright law generally. Molly’s professional  background prior to her legal studies include art auction house and museum  work.

Molly received a bachelor’s degree in French and her J.D. from the University of Washington  in Seattle. She is fluent in French.

Panelist: Hannu Wager, WTO

Panelist: Nicolas  Gorjestani,  The World Bank Group

Nicolas  Gorjestani is Senior Adviser and Chief Knowledge and Learning Officer of  the Africa Region, The World Bank Group. An economist by training, Mr.  Gorjestani has held a variety of senior staff and management positions at the  Bank. He is one of the pioneers of knowledge sharing, learning an  innovation at the World Bank, having designed and managed several innovative  programs. He is also Program Director of the Indigenous Knowledge for  Development Program and the Africa Region Debriefing Program. 

Some of the knowledge sharing techniques and  programs developed under Mr. Gorjestani’s leadership have been recognized as  best practice by the American Productivity and Quality Center. His publications in the area of knowledge and development include: “Capacity  Enhancement through Knowledge Transfer: a Behavioral Framework for Reflection,  Action and Results” (World Bank, 2005); “The Way Forward on Indigenous Knowledge”, in Indigenous Knowledge: Local Pathways to Global Development  (World Bank, 2004); “Knowledge Sharing in the Africa Region: a Results  Framework” (co-authored, World Bank, 2004); “Innovations in Knowledge Sharing and Learning in the Africa Region: Retrospective and Prospective” (World Bank,  2002); “Indigenous Knowledge for Development: Opportunities and  Challenges”(2001); “Leveraging Knowledge into the Africa Region’s Quality  Assurance Process — A Road Map” (World Bank, 1999); “Indigenous  Knowledge for Development — A Framework for Action” (co-authored, World  Bank, 1998); “Knowledge Sharing & Innovation in the Africa Region — A  Retrospective” (World Bank, 1998); Mr. Gorjestani has contributed papers  at several international conferences on knowledge and development.

Lunch Speaker:

Bob Armitage, Senior Vice  President and General Counsel, Eli Lilly

Robert A. Armitage became senior vice  president and general counsel for Eli Lilly and Company in January 2003, and is  a member of the company’s policy and strategy committee. He joined the company  as vice president and general patent counsel, Lilly Research Laboratories, in  October 1999.

Armitage was born  in Port Huron, Mich.,  and received a bachelor of arts degree in physics and mathematics in 1970 from Albion College.  He received a master’s degree in physics from the University of Michigan  in 1971 and a juris doctor from the University of Michigan Law School in 1973.  Prior to joining Lilly, Armitage was chief intellectual property counsel for  The Upjohn Company from 1983 to 1993. He also was a partner in the Washington, D.C.,  office of Vinson & Elkins LLP from 1993 to 1999.

Armitage is a  member and a past president of the American Intellectual Property Law  Association (AIPLA) and the Association of Corporate Patent Counsel (ACPC). He  is also a past chair of the Patent Committee of the Pharmaceutical Research and  Manufacturers of America (PhRMA), the National Council of Intellectual Property  Law Associations (NCIPLA), the Intellectual Property Committee of the National  Association of Manufacturers (NAM), the Fellows of the American Intellectual  Property Law Association, and the Intellectual Property Law Section of the  State Bar of Michigan.

He has served as  an adjunct professor of law at George Washington University,  as a member of the board of directors of Human Genome Sciences, Inc., and as  president of the board of directors of the Hospice of Southwest Michigan, Inc.  He has also served as a member of the board of directors of both Intellectual Property  Owners (IPO) and the National Inventors Hall of Fame Foundation (NIHFF). He is  currently serving as a member of the Council for the Intellectual Property Law  Section of the American Bar Association (ABA IPL Section), a member of the  Board of Directors of the Indianapolis Symphony Orchestra, a member of the  Greater Indianapolis Progress Committee and the Indianapolis Race Relations  Leadership Network, and a trustee on the Albion College Board of Trustees.

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Conference Co-Sponsors

Institute for Intellectual Property in Asia

Center for Global Law and Policy, Santa Clara Law

The American Society of International Law

and

The High Tech Law Institute, Santa Clara Law

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