Powerhouse panel gives patent scoop
"The America Invents Act is now law, but there are already lots of interpretations about what each individual section means," said Barner, a Chicago based partner with Foley & Lardner who helped shape the biggest change in patent law in 60 years as deputy undersecretary of commerce for intellectual property for the first two years of the Obama administration.
"We do know one thing," said Hampton, assistant director of the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office during the Clinton administration and a partner in the Washington office of Dickstein Shapiro. "It's going to create a lot of jobs for patent attorneys." Hampton, who teaches adjunct at the Howard University School of Law, never misses an opportunity to encourage more blacks to enter the intellectual property law field.
Moderating the session, one of nine sessions which cut to the core of cutting edge global markets during Innovation & Equity, is Mottley, principal shareholder of Banner Witcoff in Washington and the new president of the 90,000 member District of Columbia Bar, second largest in the country. He is also the first intellectual property lawyer to head the D.C. Bar. Mottley set the stage for the 2012 discussion with an overview on intellectual property during last year's Innovation & Equity.
ReUnion: Education-Arts-Heritage, the African-American educational television network, will broadcast the full proceedings of Innovation & Equity during 2012. ReUnion, National Black Business Month, BlackRestaurant.Net and Black Parents Guide are sponsoring the most significant black industrial, research and education gathering since the time of Marcus Garvey over two days Jan. 14-15. Registration is $750 and can be ordered online at souloftechnology.com and blackmoney.com.
Capitalizing Creativity: Job Creation and Innovation is the culmination of a year-long process to find the most promising African-American industrial innovators that included Catapult Innovation Showcases in 12 cities, an exhibition Freedom Riders of the Cutting Edge at The Tech Museum of Innovation and the filming and premiere of A Great Day in Gaming: From Queens to Silicon Valley: The Gerald A. Lawson Story, a ReUnion documentary about the African-American inventor of the first cartridge video game console. After the debut at The Tech, A Great Day in Gaming has also screened at the African-American Museum and Library in Oakland, and Temple University College of Engineering in Philadelphia. The movie will screen on Saturday, Jan. 14 during Innovation & Equity 2012.
Silicon Ceiling 11: Equal Opportunity and High Technology, the most comprehensive study of African-Americans in employment, entrepreneurship, research and education by state and county, will be available to each registrant for Innovation & Equity. It includes the first county by county salary survey for blacks in high tech fields, analyzes the lack of civil rights enforcement and the consequences for job separations of blacks in these high wage fields across the country. Paul Almeida, president of the Department for Professional Employees of the AFL-CIO, and Howard Sullivan, president and son of the founder of the Opportunities Industrialization Center of America, contribute forewords on the importance of growing and preserving the 455,000 African-Americans working in cutting edge professions.
Innovation & Equity 2012 begins a year of activities for the 12th annual 50 Most Important African-Americans in Technology, selected by blackmoney.com executive editor John William Templeton since 1999. Templeton is former editor of the San Jose Business Journal and author of the annual Silicon Ceiling study since 1998. He is also producer of the documentaries Freedom Riders of the Cutting Edge with filmmaker Kevin Epps and A Great Day in Gaming with ReUnion co-executive producer William Hammons II.
Barner, Hampton and Mottley are among the 50 Most selectees providing highly valuable insights into the direction of global technology during the nine workshops on Sunday, Jan. 15. Others, who embody creating jobs through innovation, are:
Dr. Gerald Boyd, President and Co-Founder of DB Consulting Group of Silver Spring, MD, a prime contractor for NOAA's CLASS information architecture for sharing meteorological data from satellites, who has grown to nearly 500 employees in ten years;
Dr. Juan Gilbert, Chair of Human Centered Computing at Clemson University, project manager for the Election Assistance Commission's research project on designing universal voting equipment, and a recent Presidential awardee for mentoring underrepresented students into science;
Nancy Scott, President of Rockville, MD-based Powertek, one of the largest African-American owned information technology contractors to a variety of federal agencies.
Keith M. Spears, managing director of Oakland, CA-based Legacy Venture Partners, who has raised more than $50 million from foundations and pension funds to invest in minority-owned cutting edge startups.
Gerald Commissiong, President and CEO of publicly-trade Amarantus BioSciences in Sunnyvale, CA, now in research trials for smart proteins designed to prevent cell death, advances developed by Chief Scientist Dr. John Commissiong.
Dr. Jean Orelien, President of SkiMetrika, a Research Triangle Park, N.C. based provider of epidemiological statistics for the Center for Disease Control and National Institutes of Health, with almost $1 billion in federal contracts.
Jerry Davis, deputy chief information officer of the U.S. Dept. of Veterans Affairs, a specialist in information security, particularly for health records.
Miranda Bouldin, CEO of Logicore Inc. in Huntsville, AL, a major contractor for the Department of Defense and NASA,
Carl Kent, CEO of MyMediaTones Inc. of San Mateo, CA, developer of the FriendCoup application which allows coupons to be redeemed using mobile phones eliminating paper from the transaction. Dr. Marc Hannah, chief scientist for MyMediaTones, is the co-founder of Silicon Graphics Inc., whose dissertation from Stanford led to the development of 3-D scientific workstations in the 1980s.
Joey Hutchins, CEO of Right Direction Technology of Baltimore, specializing in information technology solutions for public agencies.
Charlene Coleman, CEO of Sensory Acumen of Orinda, CA, which has developed an olfactory device for game applications, which is also being used for treatment of trauma victims, including war veterans. Chief Designer Michael Coleman and Vice President Carl Childers are bringing this technology to market.
Gordon Bellamy, executive director of the International Game Developers Association. Bellamy is the first executive director of IGDA and former board chairman. Early in his career, he was one of the developers of Madden Football. He is also featured in the documentary A Great Day in Gaming with poignant exchanges with Gerald A. Lawson, whom he had never met before last year's Game Developers Conference. Sadly, it was to be their own encounter as Lawson passed at age 70 less than a month later.
Michael Hurst, CEO of ChloroFill in San Diego, who licensed processes from Chinese universities to develop renewable building materials without carcinogens to meet new EPA standards.
The gathering is a dream come true for Hampton. "I have helped a lot of folks get patents, even pro bono, but they couldn't get the funding to get to the next step," he said. More than 1,000 African-Americans gain patents each year through universities and private business, according to the National Science Foundation.
Barner hopes the America Invents Act will increase that number. "I encourage people to file early and often," she said, noting reducing filing fees for small firms and a grace period during which current rules will continue to apply.
The three intellectual property icons are eagerly preparing for their presentation with a weekly conference call. To get the most mileage for registrants, each registrant will have the opportunity to submit questions in advance about how the new America Invents Act will affect them or other. Register at souloftechnology.com or blackmoney.com to get instructions on how to submit queries.
