The IP Strategy Summit: Texas
Overview: The IP Strategy Summit – Texas
Texas’ leadership in energy, aerospace, and life sciences places it at the forefront of high-stakes IP strategy. As organizations expand R&D and navigate hybrid work, high mobility, and cross-border enforcement, legal teams face growing complexity in protecting innovation.
The IP Strategy Summit: Texas convenes senior in-house counsel and IP leaders to explore the legal and operational realities of managing portfolios, mitigating risk, and responding to disruptive technologies. With a focus on patents, trade secrets, copyright, and brand enforcement, the program offers a grounded view of how leading organizations are adapting.
Built for professionals operating at scale, the summit blends expert panels, real-world case studies, and peer discussion to deliver actionable insights. Attendees will leave with tools to align protection strategies with business value—while staying ahead of evolving threats and opportunities.
+ CLE Pending Approval TX
- Portfolio Management & IP Strategy: Aligning Business Goals
- Copyright in the Streaming and Content Boom
- Patent Litigation Trends
- AI, Generative Content, and IP — Who Owns What?
- Global Brand Protection: Winning Strategies Across Jurisdictions
- Trade Secrets in 2025: Prevention, Protection & Internal Education as Core Strategy
- Patent Enforcement: Balancing Risk, Value, and Business Impact
- Chief IP Counsel
- Chief Legal Officer / General Counsel
- Deputy, Associate, or Assistant General Counsel
- VP or Director of IP Strategy
- Head of Intellectual Property or Licensing
- Patent Counsel / IP Counsel
- Trade Secret Counsel / Confidential Information Officer
- Trademark & Brand Protection Counsel
- Copyright or Digital Rights Counsel
- Director of Business and Legal Affairs
- Director or VP of Legal, Product, or R&D Counsel
- Head of Litigation / Litigation Counsel
- Corporate or Commercial Counsel
- Legal Operations Leaders Supporting IP Strategy
- Innovation or Technology Counsel
Agenda
One-to-One Meetings begin. If interested in participating, email info@centerforceusa.com
A strong IP portfolio doesn’t just protect innovation—it drives strategic growth, competitive advantage, and long-term business value. Legal teams are evolving their patent and trade secret strategies to better align with corporate priorities, R&D investment, and global expansion. As innovation cycles accelerate and budgets tighten, IP leaders are rethinking how to measure value and make tradeoffs across portfolios. From early-stage idea capture to monetization and divestment, portfolio management is becoming more integrated with corporate planning.
This panel will discuss:
- How to assess and adjust portfolio strategy based on evolving business needs
- Balancing patenting, trade secret protection, and licensing in a resource-constrained environment
- Governance models that improve visibility across R&D, legal, and commercial teams
- Metrics and tools that help IP leaders demonstrate value to the business
With the explosion of digital content creation, licensing, and distribution, copyright law is being tested like never before. Streaming platforms, user-generated content, and AI tools have upended traditional content ownership and royalty models. This panel will unpack current copyright challenges facing companies that create, license, or distribute media and content. Panelists will explore recent legal disputes, legislative developments, and enforcement trends that in-house counsel must stay ahead of. Topics include derivative works, platform liability, international rights management, and AI-generated works. Whether you’re in media, tech, or entertainment, this session offers practical insights into managing copyright in the age of rapid creation and consumption. Expect real-world takeaways from leaders in the field.
This panel will discuss:
- Copyright risks and considerations in streaming and digital content
- Enforcement trends and platform responsibilities
- Strategies for rights management and licensing in global markets
- The role of AI in content creation and implications for ownership and infringement
If interested in participating, email info@centerforceusa.com
Patent litigation remains a moving target, shaped by venue preferences, new case law, litigation funding, and shifts in global enforcement. This panel will explore how in-house counsel are preparing for and responding to litigation threats amid increasing complexity and cost. From NPEs to competitor suits to ITC actions, litigation strategy now demands faster decision-making, budget transparency, and collaboration across teams.
This panel will discuss:
- Top patent litigation risks and emerging venue trends in 2025
- Strategies to reduce exposure and increase leverage in active litigation
- The impact of litigation funding and how to prepare internally
- Key legal developments and decisions shaping patent litigation outcomes
The rise of generative AI has shaken foundational assumptions about intellectual property ownership. When AI models produce text, images, inventions, or code who owns the output? This panel will dissect the intersecting challenges across copyright, patent, and trade secret law, with a focus on how in-house counsel are navigating uncharted territory. From employee use of AI tools to vendor contracts and internal model development, new questions are emerging about authorship, originality, and protection. As the law lags behind the technology, corporate IP leaders must define their own playbook.
This panel will discuss:
- Legal theories of ownership for AI-generated content across IP types
- Internal policies for managing employee and third-party use of generative AI
- Risks to trade secrets and confidential information in AI training and outputs
- Contract clauses and governance strategies to future-proof IP rights
If interested in participating, email info@centerforceusa.com
John Lynn co-leads Kirkland’s Technology & IP Transactions Practice and heads the practice on the West Coast out of the Bay Area office and in Texas out of the Austin office. John is on the forefront of understanding the complex relationships between intellectual property and technology, on the one hand, and business matters and risk, on the other hand.
Protecting your brand across global markets has never been more critical or more complex. From counterfeit enforcement to online infringement to navigating local trademark regimes, brand protection requires coordination between legal, compliance, and marketing teams. We will explore how companies are evolving global brand protection strategies in response to regulatory shifts, ecommerce challenges, and enforcement gaps. With brand equity increasingly tied to IP enforcement, this session delivers timely insights for cross-border success.
This panel will discuss:
- Trends in global brand enforcement and jurisdiction-specific risk factors
- Online enforcement strategies and platform collaboration models
- Working with customs, local counsel, and global enforcement teams
- Building a scalable and proactive brand protection program
As threats to confidential information grow more complex, trade secret protection is becoming a top priority for in-house legal teams. From employee mobility and hybrid work to increased vendor access and generative AI, the risk of trade secret leakage has never been higher. In 2025, prevention is the new defense, with leading organizations embedding trade secret awareness across engineering, product, and business units. Legal teams are also strengthening internal policies, training programs, and cross-functional collaboration. We will examine the real-world strategies companies are using to map, label, and protect proprietary know-how.
This panel will discuss:
- How to operationalize trade secret protection with internal stakeholders
- Legal and technical controls to mitigate risk across distributed workforces
- Real-world lessons from recent trade secret litigation and investigations
- Embedding trade secret education and accountability into employee workflows
Patent enforcement is no longer just about legal wins—it’s about protecting competitive advantage, justifying investment, and aligning with business priorities. As budgets tighten and litigation risks rise, in-house counsel must assess which patents are worth enforcing, where to enforce them, and how to maximize impact without overextending resources. Panelists will share how companies are building smarter patent enforcement strategies by aligning business objectives, potential outcomes, and reputational risk, while sharing real-world approaches to portfolio segmentation, litigation readiness, enforcement venues, and evolving trends in damages, injunctions, and litigation funding to help shift enforcement decisions from reactive to strategic.
This panel will discuss:
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How to identify and prioritize patents for enforcement based on business value and risk
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Strategic use of enforcement venues: district court, ITC, and international jurisdictions
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Evolving trends in remedies, settlements, and litigation outcomes
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When and how to leverage litigation funding or other alternative models to support enforcement
If interested in participating, email info@centerforceusa.com
Rotating, 20-minute discussions hosted by a topic expert
RT 1: Competitor vs. Competitor IP Litigation: Offensive and Defensive Strategies
Speakers
John Lynn co-leads Kirkland’s Technology & IP Transactions Practice and heads the practice on the West Coast out of the Bay Area office and in Texas out of the Austin office. John is on the forefront of understanding the complex relationships between intellectual property and technology, on the one hand, and business matters and risk, on the other hand.
Sponsors
Kirkland & Ellis LLP
Kirkland is one of the world’s leading law firms with more than 3,000 lawyers representing clients in complex corporate transactions, litigation, restructuring and intellectual property matters from 18 offices in the U.S., Europe and Asia.
Kirkland’s commitment to diversity, equity and inclusion begins with its leaders, who understand that diverse teams produce the best results, hold relationships as a core value and prioritize community and belonging. As such, DEI at Kirkland is a strategic imperative that influences every business function at the Firm.
We are proud to sponsor the “Driving Diversity in Law” conference.
Venue
TBA
Houston, TX
Pricing
| Register By | In House Counsel | Law Firms & Vendors |
|---|---|---|
| October 15, 2025 | $0.00 | info@centerforceusa.com |
| October 22, 2025 | $0.00 | info@centerforceusa.com |
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