The 3rd Annual IP Strategy Summit: Houston

Co-managing partner Phil Colburn has transformed Cantor Colburn into one of the nation’s leading intellectual property law firms. Phil leads a team of more than 110 attorneys, patent agents, and technical advisors who are committed to helping clients optimize their IP assets through the timely delivery of top quality, cost-effective legal services. His counsel to Fortune 50 multinationals, as well as smaller companies and universities, is informed both by unique technical insights gained from his years of professional experience as a design engineer and by strategic perspectives derived from more than 20 years’ practice as an IP attorney. Taking a proactive, results-driven approach allows him to help clients define their needs and implement strategies that achieve their objectives. A frequent speaker on IP issues, Phil is an Adjunct Professor of Patent Law at Western New England College School of Law.

Ann is responsible for managing USAA’s growing patent portfolio, supporting Innovation and licensing efforts, and facilitating the integration of intellectual property across the enterprise.

Since 2014, Ozz Siddiq has served as Chief Patent Counsel for Lennox International, Inc., a company focused on providing heating, ventilation, air conditioning, and refrigeration products. Ozz manages the entire patent portfolio for Lennox in this role. This includes everything from providing corporate-wide IP training and mining projects for potential inventions to reviewing every filing prepared by outside counsel. Ozz provides legal services to his internal clients at Lennox on a variety of IP topics. As part of his role at Lennox, Ozz negotiates contracts and agreements where IP may be an issue. Upon starting at Lennox, Ozz created and implemented the company’s trade secret and open source software use policies. At a business unit’s request, Ozz conducts freedom to operate investigations for products in the planning stages and helps the business unit create a product development road map going forward based on the results of the investigation. In addition to his role as Chief Patent Counsel, Ozz also provides general legal counsel to Lennox’s Information Technology business unit. Prior to joining Lennox, Ozz worked for the Dallas office of Baker Botts LLP for close to 5 years. At Baker Botts, Ozz’s practice focused on patent litigation, patent prosecution, licensing, and IP due diligence. Ozz graduated from the University of Houston Law Center in 2009. Ozz worked as a software engineer for OK.gov for 3 years before deciding to pursue a legal career. Ozz graduated from the University of Oklahoma in 2002 with a Computer Science degree.

Matt Scheele is a licensed attorney with over 10 years of experience advising companies in intellectual property matters.  Prior to joining Fluor Corporation, Matt was with Weatherford International, an oilfield services company where he served as senior IP counsel, and ArthroCare Corporation, a medical device company, where he served as associate general counsel and director of IP.  Matt was also formerly an associate at the law firm Conley Rose advising clients in the protection, enforcement and acquisition of intellectual property rights.  Matt holds a B.S. in Mechanical Engineering from the University of Texas at Austin, and a J.D. from South Texas College of Law Houston.

Michael specializes in intellectual property law, patent law and providing counsel to small business owners. He has worked as a senior attorney and general counsel at Cudd Energy Services. Currently, he works as associate general counsel for peak completion technologies. 

Diane is Senior Managing Counsel for J. C. Penney Corporation, Inc., responsible for all patent litigation matters. Prior to joining J. C. Penney Corporation, Diane was a shareholder as Winstead PC in Dallas, Texas and a member of its Intellectual Property and Commercial Litigation Practice Groups. She practiced at Winstead for more than 25 years before leaving private practice to join JCPenney. During her tenure at Winstead, Diane represented clients that were patent owners, defendants accused of infringement by competitors, as well as clients accused of infringement by NPEs.

Mark A. Tidwell is a partner in the Intellectual Property Practice Group in the Houston office. He focuses his practice on prosecution, acquisition, licensing, divestiture and enforcement of patent rights, trademark rights, trade secrets and copyrights. Mark has filed and prosecuted hundreds of patent, trademark and copyright applications. He was honored in Intellectual Asset Magazine's Patent 1000: The World's Leading Patent Practitioners, Globe White Page Ltd, 2014 and 2016 for patent prosecution and IP transactions.

John Poliak is a Senior Counsel at Halliburton supporting software licensing and technology agreements.  His intellectual property experience includes over ten years as a Senior Counsel with BP.  John is passionate about turning technology into business.  He leverages his prior chemicals industry management roles in business development, finance, engineering and manufacturing to relate to the clients and help deliver their goals.

Walter C. Grollitsch has over 12 years of legal experience in advising international clients on legal matters, intellectual property strategies, patent law and patent portfolio management. For the last several years, Walter has worked as in-house counsel at Intervale Capital which owns over 10 portfolio companies in the oil and gas industry. He has advised the management at the portfolio companies on various legal matters and on strategic ways to create, defend and assert their intellectual property rights. Walter has been involved in several intellectual property disputes in the federal courts and in the United States Patent Office. He has negotiated numerous settlement agreements and cross-licensing agreements. Walter has an engineering degree from The Penn State University and a law degree from South Texas College of Law.

Thomas currently holds the position of Senior IP Counsel at Baker Hughes Inc. In this role, Thomas, a registered Patent Attorney, is responsible for the identification and protection of proprietary technologies and services developed and commercialized by Baker Hughes’s Artificial Lift and Intelligent Well Systems product lines. In his role, he handles patents, trademarks, and trade secrets related to the Artificial Lift and Intelligent Well Systems technologies, as well as contracts and litigation related to those technologies. Before becoming an attorney, Thomas worked as an engineer in the petrochemical field. He worked with Union Carbide’s Unipol™ Polyethylene and Unipol Polypropylene technologies during his career at Union Carbide. He also managed the Unipol Licensing Training Organization before attending law school in 1999. Thomas has a Bachelor of Science in Mechanical Engineering from Texas Tech University, and practiced as a Chemical and Mechanical Engineer in his career with Union Carbide. Thomas has a Juris Doctor degree from the University of Houston Law Center.

Paul drafts and negotiates complex IP-related original agreements with R&D partners globally, including national labs, universities, suppliers, scale-up partners and start-ups. He manages global prosecution of a large patent portfolio, relating to a wide variety of products and processes, including lithium batteries, capacitors, complex thin materials, catalysts and chemical processes. In addition, Paul advises clients on all aspects of patent law, including setting up product groups' IP strategies as needed. He helps clients navigate the minefield of competitor patents, and provides creative training to all clients.

Phillip manages all intellectual property matters, with a focus on overseeing patent litigation, reviewing possible incidents of infringement, managing patent prosecution, and administering licensing issues. Additionally he provides guidance to company leadership in the form of legal opinions on Patentability, Validity of Competitor Patents, Freedom to Operate, Infringement, and Design-Around Strategies. Phillip leads employee education sessions and develops best practices, with the goal of creating and preserving the company's legal rights with respect to all intellectual property. He also drafts and reviews contracts, including agreements associated with business deals, licensing, non-disclosure, joint development and collaboration, master services, and the employment of technical personnel.

Nadeem Bridi has over 18 years of experience in the licensing and acquisition of intellectual property rights, and management of multi-national patent litigation and other IP related disputes.

Roger H. Lee focuses his practice on intellectual property law, with an emphasis on inter partes matters before the Patent Trial and Appeal Board (PTAB) of the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office. He has extensive experience before the PTAB and has successfully represented petitioners and patent owners in inter partes review (IPR) proceedings.

Roger provides strategic counseling and opinions concerning validity, infringement, and freedom to operate. He helps clients navigate complex disputes involving multiple patents and parallel proceedings. He has conducted appeals before the Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit.

Roger has extensive experience preparing and prosecuting patent applications and managing patent portfolios. He is experienced in all phases of patent prosecution, from drafting applications to conducting appeals. He has obtained numerous patents for clients in the chemical, pharmaceutical, biotechnology, mechanical, and electrical fields.

 

 

Kurt Jones is a seasoned Patent & Trademark Attorney successful at creating, prosecuting, and enforcing intellectual property rights at the patent office, district court, and federal courts of appeal. Combines legal analyses with engineering expertise in the mechanical, chemical, and software arts. Effective at negotiating favorable financial settlements and licenses. Skilled at simplifying complex technology for non-engineers.

• Registered with the U.S. Patent Office
• Licensed in Indiana, New York, California and Texas
• Patent Applications in various technologies
• Foreign and Domestic Patent Prosecution
• License Agreements
• Patent Trial and Appeal Board Practice
• Trademark Trial and Appeal Board Practice
• First-Chair Trial Experience
• ITC Proceedings
• Federal Circuit Practice

Richard is the firm’s Managing Partner with over 30 years’ experience in the patent profession, and sits within the Engineering and Tech Practice Group. Richard handles a range of subject matter in the mechanical and electrical engineering fields, including optics, software patents and internet-related issues. He has considerable experience in European Patent Office Oppositions and Appeal proceedings, including Hearings. He has also been involved in UK High Court and Patents County Court (IPEC) proceedings with solicitors and barristers. Richard focuses on providing practical advice, relating to drafting decisions, infringement/enforcement problems and foreign filing strategies.

Paul sits within our Engineering and Tech practice group, predominantly working within the healthcare sector, for innovator SMEs, joint ventures and multinational healthcare companies. He particularly enjoys working with companies in the life sciences sector to develop patent portfolios covering engineering and technology innovations. Recently this has involved working for clients in areas such as electrochemical molecular diagnostics, cytometry and bioelectronics. Paul also handles a significant prosecution and opposition workload across a number of different medical devices, including minimally invasive surgical instruments, endoscopic accessories, sutures and injection devices.

Chloe handles a diverse range of industrial and medicinal materials-based subject matter, encompassing consumer chemistry, sustainable technology and implantable and bench-top medical devices including molecular diagnostics instruments, disposable fluidic cartridges, stents, and bone fixation devices.

Chloe has relationships with long-standing and new clients whose commercial interests lie in polymer chemistry and the processing of polymers into films, or their use in washing methods. This patent-dense field is particularly challenging and Chloe works closely with clients developing patent strategies that serve their commercial interests. As a result, she has valuable experience in patent prosecution outside of Europe, in particular, China, Japan, and the US.

A significant amount of Chloe’s work involves implantable medical devices. This complements her materials science background and Ph.D. focusing on the synthesis and characterization of scaffolds and thin films based on collagen for use in heart tissue engineering. This seemingly narrow field covers a broad range of technologies and Chloe’s scientific knowledge in the fields of metallurgy, carbon-based materials, thin films, and ceramics supports her work in this area.

Chloe enjoys swimming and competes at the National level. She keeps up her musical skills playing flute with a local orchestra, and she is a cooking (and eating) enthusiast.

Dan Bikus is Dennemeyer’s Central Region Business Development Manager. Dan has 12+ years’ experience consulting with AmLaw 250 and Fortune 500 legal departments. Dan is a seasoned intellectual property strategist. In his current role, Dan coaches corporate IP legal departments on how to maximize the value of their patent/trademark portfolios, while minimizing any unnecessary spend through Dennemeyer’s suite of services. Dan is a member of the IPO, AIPLA, and INTA. Dan has a Bachelor of Arts Degree in Economics from Illinois State University.

Carlo Cotrone is Senior Intellectual Property Counsel at Baker Hughes a GE Company in Houston. As lead IP counsel for the Surface, Drilling, Offshore, and Subsea Production Systems business units, he develops and manages the execution of offensive and defensive IP strategies; provides IP and general corporate advice; and negotiates strategic agreements with customers, suppliers, and licensees. Previously, Carlo practiced law at several firms on the East Coast and in the Midwest, most recently as a partner. He received his Juris Doctor degree from Marquette University Law School and is admitted in Texas and registered to practice before the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office.