Joanna Bloor, is a people accelerator, scalability junkie and belief agent for brave and curious women. A veteran in the media space, Joanna has almost 20 years experience in digital media, broadcast television and radio. Working in leadership roles at OpenTable, CBS Interactive and Pandora, Joanna is an established expert in strategy, sales, team development, and ad operations. Joanna is a speaker and panel moderator at industry events including Watermark, Dreamforce and many others. In addition, she has delivered motivational speeches, created customized sales training, team building and personal career development programs for a host of business and organizations including Microsoft, E&Y, and America Online. Joanna is a member of Hipower, a group of women corporate leaders focused on accelerating member’s leadership roles from professional success to wide-ranging significance. Hipower is organized under Leading Women in Technology, an organization dedicated to unleashing the potential of professionals who advise technology businesses and executives.

Julie Brush is the premier legal search and industry expert to corporate and law firm executives throughout the globe. Her expertise includes General Counsel, in house counsel (all practice areas/levels) and retained law firm searches. Julie’s awards include The Women’s Initiative Organization Entrepreneur of the Year, Silicon Valley Business Journal’s Women of Influence, The Best and Brightest Business Leaders of “40 Under 40” and the YWCA Tribute to Women & Industry Award. Julie earned her BA from UCLA where she was a member of the Women’s Varsity Tennis Team and professional tennis tour. She received her JD from GGU School of Law and served as a Law Review Member and Editor; and worked full-time while attending law school in the evening. Julie practiced real estate law with Brobeck, Phleger & Harrison and served in a corporate role at Levi Strauss & Co. before founding Solutus. Julie is on the Board of Advisors for Watermark and is the Co-Chair of the General Counsel Network. She serves on the Board of Advisors for Acritas and was an Advisory Board member of the Women’s Intellectual Property Lawyers Association. She is the author of the immensely popular legal blog The Lawyer Whisperer.

Eileen Carey is the Founder & CEO of Glassbreakers, a diversity and inclusion enterprise software company. Glassbreakers offers Fortune 1000 companies retention focused technology to make employee resource group management simple, scalable and measurable. Eileen has spent the majority of her career pre -startup in corporate communications and global public affairs. She was previously at Citigroup and Thomson Reuters within their IP enterprise software division called MarkMonitor. She holds an MBA in International Marketing from Fordham and a BA in English from The University of Maryland.

Ching-Lee Fukuda has obtained significant patent litigation victories both in federal courts and at the PTAB, focusing on the electronics, software, telecommunications, medical devices and chemicals fields. With more than 18 years of experience, she has been lead counsel in district court cases as well as in post-grant proceedings. Ching-Lee’s successes span every stage of litigation, including during preliminary injunction, summary judgment, trial and appeal, and include winning §101 arguments on behalf of both defendants and plaintiffs. One of her summary judgment arguments helped shape an invalidity ruling that was affirmed by an early Federal Circuit §101 decision. Ching-Lee has been counsel in more than 40 post-grant proceedings, including oral arguments at final hearings leading to a complete win record to date. Ching-Lee is named by IAM Patent 1000 as one of the world’s leading patent practitioners in 2015, in which peers describe her as a “skilled advocate and good leader” with “a great intellect.” She also was part of a team that obtained a stunning victory in the Antares Pharma v. medac Pharma case, affirmed in a precedential opinion by the Federal Circuit, which won an LMG Life Sciences Award for 2015 as “Patent Impact Case of the Year.”

Emily Hostage is Director of Corporate Development and Policy Counsel at RPX Corporation. At RPX, Ms. Hostage analyzes and reports on patent market data, and uses them to inform RPX’s corporate strategy. She develops policy strategy and trains internal teams on changes in patent law. Before RPX, Ms. Hostage was an associate at Arnold & Porter LLP where she focused on patents, copyrights, and trade secrets. She also previously served as corporate counsel for a late-stage startup solar technology company. Ms. Hostage received her BS and MS in Electrical Engineering from Boston University, and her JD from Harvard Law School.

Appointed on April 4, 1998, Judge Laporte presides over numerous civil and criminal cases. She also conducts settlement conferences and resolves discovery disputes. Judge Laporte has served on various committees and boards, including the Board of Governors for the Northern California Chapter of the Association of Business Trial Lawyers, the editorial board of the Federal Courts Law Review, the Executive Board of the Ninth Circuit Magistrate Judges, and the Jury Trial Improvement Committee of the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals. She regularly speaks and participates in panels concerning patent litigation, jury trials, e-discovery, employment law, settlement, and other topics. Judge Laporte is a graduate of Princeton University and Yale Law School and is a Marshall Scholar, with an M.A. from Oxford University. She previously served as a partner at a litigation firm and an Administrative Law Judge. She was also Chief of Special Litigation for the San Francisco City Attorney’s Office, a law clerk to the Honorable Marilyn Hall Patel, and a policy planner/economist at the Federal Trade Commission.

Specializing in intellectual property litigation. She has represented both plaintiffs and defendants in complex multi-defendant, multi-patent cases. Her record includes victories at all stages of litigation, including appeal, trial, summary judgment, and motions to dismiss. She has also obtained walk aways for defendants with no payment to plaintiffs, as well as attorneys’ fees and costs awards. She holds a bachelor’s degree in computer science from UC Berkeley, and has litigated cases across different industries, including semiconductors, telecommunications, web technologies, user interfaces, file and storage systems, and medical devices.

Kathleen M. O’Malley was appointed to the United States Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit by President Barack Obama in 2010. Prior to her elevation to the Federal Circuit, Judge O’Malley was appointed to the United States District Court for the Northern District of Ohio by President William J. Clinton on October 12, 1994.

Nora is currently the Co-Owner and Beverage Director at Lois, an all-tap wine bar in New York’s Alphabet City. She earned her Sommelier certification from the Sommelier Society of America and has worked in various areas of the wine industry since graduating from Georgetown University in Washington, DC with a degree in English. She worked as a PR coordinator for wine clients such as Frescobaldi, Arnaldo Caprai, and Wines of Portugal, before becoming an apprentice at Brooklyn Winery and Manager and Wine Buyer at Alphabet City Wine Company, a specialty wine store in the East Village. Prior to entering the wine industry, Nora earned a graduate certificate in publishing from Columbia University and worked in the food and beverage publishing arm of Crown, an imprint of Penguin Random House. She was also the Director of PR and Social Media at CLEAR, a biometric security company.

Laura is an Assistant Clinical Professor of Law and the founding Director of the Entrepreneurs’ Law Clinic at Santa Clara University School of Law, where under her supervision, law students provide free legal services to Silicon Valley entrepreneurs and startups. She also teaches an intellectual property course to SCU undergraduate engineers, and regularly speaks on topics relating to entrepreneurship law and intellectual property. Prior to joining the faculty at Santa Clara University School of Law, Laura worked in private practice representing technology startups and entrepreneurs. She gained her business acumen through her position as the first Vice President of Legal Affairs and Corporate Secretary to the Board of Directors at Cypress Semiconductor Corporation. Before Cypress, Laura litigated IP infringement cases at Arnold White & Durkee, and prosecuted patents at Intel Corporation. She was one of only two academics recognized in 2014 as the Top 50 Women Leaders in Tech Law, and her innovative teaching techniques were recognized in 2015 when Santa Clara Law’s High Tech Law Institute received a Legal Innovator award.

Tricia Timm is the Founder of GCAssist, a provider of outsourced legal services for high-tech companies. With client demands on the rise, many companies are looking for alternative providers of legal services. Through GCAssist, Tricia is able to provide immediate support to her clients, while at the same time providing alternative legal careers for a new generation of attorneys. Prior to GCAssist, Tricia was the SVP, General Counsel at SugarCRM Inc., a late stage SaaS company. Before that, she held a variety of different in-house counsel roles such as Acting General Counsel for software maker Borland, a public company with over 35 subsidiaries worldwide; Director, Legal at Homestead.com, an Internet start-up, building processes from the ground-up; and she was Corporate Counsel at Vantive Corporation. She gained her practical knowledge of how the law and technology intersect as an associate at the law firm Brobeck, Phleger and Harrison LLP, where she specialized in IPOs, venture financings, M&A and public company representation. Tricia’s awards include The Recorder’s Employer Choice – Legal Department of the Year Award and Silicon Valley Business Journal Diversity Champion- Corporate Counsel Award. Tricia is also on the Advisory Board of the Katherine & George Alexander Community Law Center at Santa Clara University.

Sarita Venkat is Senior Counsel at Apple Inc., where she manages complex, high-risk patent and commercial litigations worldwide. She has secured multiple trial wins, and managed numerous cases to favorable resolutions in the U.S. and abroad on behalf of Apple. Prior to joining Apple, she handled pharmaceutical and medical device litigation worldwide at Abbott Laboratories Inc. including Hatch Waxman cases in the U.S., and defending the company’s IP in Europe, Asia, South America and Russia. She is a registered patent attorney, has a B.S. in Biology and a minor in Psychology.

Annsley is an experienced and commercially-focused intellectual property litigator specialising in complex cross-border patent and trade secrets litigation in the life sciences and TMT sectors. With a background in chemical engineering, Annsley advises leading innovative companies on high value patent and SPC litigation before the English courts and CJEU. She frequently supports pharmaceutical clients in coordinating their global litigation strategy and life cycle management projects against generics. Annsley has also advised TMT companies on soft IP issues relating to keyword advertising and cloud computing. Annsley is listed as an IP Rising Star by Super Lawyers (2014, 2015) and, in 2014, was shortlisted in the same category for Euromoney’s Europe Women in Business Law Awards. As a permanent member of the award-winning IPKat blog team, Annsley frequently publishes articles on European and US IP court decisions and developing legislation. Annsley is a recognized expert on the Unified Patent Court advising clients and industry associations on strategic preparations. In 2014, she was appointed as Secretary of AIPPI’s Standing Committee on the UPC and Unitary Patent and is a member of EPLAW.