Committee Chair Positions
Woohoo! Xhavin Sinha has volunteered to head up the Government Affairs committee, and will be kicking things off with a discussion of whether or not to submit an amicus brief for NAPP in the Regeneron Pharma case (issue: whether "inequitable conduct" unenforceability of a patent is an appropriate sanction for litigation misconduct occurring long after the patent has issued). If you're interested in that or in helping Carie Mager, chair of the Member Benefits committee, investigate the possibility of group health insurance and other potential benefits for NAPP membership, please contact them directly or via Brandi at [email protected].
We're still looking for a Legal Affairs committee chair to replace Jeff Wendt, so if you've got expertise in contract review, please contact Jeff directly or let Brandi know.
Forum Report
The path to our new forums has been an emotional rollercoaster, and this past month that rollercoaster gathered speed on its way to new lows as we learned that after all the promises and delays and efforts to migrate to an upgraded platform, the new forums would NOT fulfill all of our requirements. I cried.
But all is not lost. The vendor has addressed some of the shortcomings and we're evaluating whether the remaining shortcomings are enough to justify contracting with the (costly) professional community forum service we had initially decided on 7 months ago. John Davis is leading the evaluation, but your comments are welcome too. You can access the new forum platform by logging in to your account on NAPP.org, and selecting the Forum link at the TOP of the page. Please note that any posts made here are TEMPORARY and subject to deletion if we go in a different direction.
NAPP's Blog for Patent Practitioners
On a much happier note, the Professional Development Committee will be launching NAPP's new blog this month. Watch for the first posting on April 6! Ongoing contributions are needed, so keep sending in your original patent-practice blog submissions or topic suggestions to Priya Cloutier directly or via Brandi at [email protected] . You can also drop suggestions into the "Idea Box" on our website.
World IP Day 26 April
The annual celebration of World IP Day is on the Thursday April 26th. We're encouraging every NAPP member to mark that date on your calendar to take a few minutes and make contact with another patent practitioner in your neighborhood. It could be an introductory phone call, lunch date, or even a brief email. ("Hi! I found your contact info on the PTO website and, in the spirit of World IP day, I thought I'd reach out to you just to make contact and learn a bit more about one of my fellow practitioners in the area. What kind of technology do you work on?"). Or, if you're on Facebook, Meetup, or one of the other local event websites, search for World IP Day events in your area and go participate to spread the good word about patent protection.
AMC Registration ALMOST open
Though the date (July 19-21, 2018, with pre-conference workshop on July 18) and place (Alexandria USPTO, with pre-conference workshop at Residence Inn in Old Town) have been set, Alex Pokot is working out the final details with the hotel (Westin) before opening up registration for the Annual Meeting & Conference. We're nearly ready, so registration should be open this month. Hopefully you've already received the refrigerator magnets and are showing them off to all your colleagues to make them jealous!
AMC Webcasting
We've received inquiries as to whether we will be webcasting any of the AMC content as we've occasionally done in the past. And the answer is… we are working on it! We hope to have at least the Friday and Saturday sessions available for live webcast, and I'll keep you posted as more information becomes available.
Upcoming Election
Each year at the Annual Meeting we have an election for three board member positions. Please start considering whether you'd be interested in becoming a board member and helping NAPP develop and grow. An official call for candidates will be issued later this month, with a deadline sometime in mid-May.
Local Meetups
To add to the usual meetups in Denver, Houston, Santa Clara, and Seattle, the folks in Atlanta, Buffalo, Dallas-Fort Worth, Los Angeles, and now Oakland, are getting local meetups organized. If you're interested in any of these meetups, or curious about setting up your own, please contact Mike Carey, either directly or via our executive director at [email protected] .
Welcome to NAPP! We gained the following new members in March. If you know or encounter any of the following folks on the forums or at a local event, please be sure to welcome them to NAPP and let them know we’re glad to have them on board!
-Moses Choi of Brea, CA
-Charles Huse of Sunnyvale, CA
-Kathleen Labelle of Lawrence, MI
-Mark Lupkowski of San Francisco, CA
-Radha Narayanan of Cambridge, MA
-Maria Trinidad Saldana of Redmond, WA
-Sean Senn of Glendale, CA
-Matthew Zehrer of Minneapolis, MN
-Song Zhu of San Francisco, CA
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