President’s Award

Mr. Tepper has been an active INTA volunteer for more than 25 years. He has served as Counsel, a member of the Board of Directors, Chair of the Legislation and Regulatory Analysis Committee, Chair of the Audit Committee, Chair of the Trademark Office Practices Committee–USPTO Subcommittee, and Co-Chair of the North America Global Advisory Committee.

As a founding member of the INTA Political Action Committee, Mr. Tepper has served on the INTA PAC Board for many years. He has also served on the USPTO’s Trademark Public Advisory Committee, including as Chair.

He has participated in drafting and commenting on several important legislative and regulatory initiatives affecting trademarks, including the Anti-Cybersquatting Consumer Protection Act, the Madrid Protocol Implementation Act, the FDA’s Trademark Pilot Program, and the American Inventors Protection Act.

Beyond INTA, Mr. Tepper has also served on the Board of Directors of the Triangle IP Association, North Carolina Volunteer Lawyers for the Arts, and North Carolina Bar Association IP Section, where he served as Section Chair.

With more than 40 years of intellectual property (IP) experience under his belt and a decades-long involvement with INTA, Mr. Hampton has proven himself to be an invaluable member of the IP community. He is a dedicated and effective champion for diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI). Over the years, he has worked to increase representation of minority attorneys, advocate for trademark administrators (TMAs), and proudly proclaims that TMAs taught him the crucial skills needed to practice trademark law. In 2016, Mr. Hampton was the inaugural recipient of the Diversity in Tech Award presented by the IP Section of the National Bar Association. The Washington Bar Association inducted him into its Hall of Fame in 2022. In 2021, he was recognized with the Mark T. Banner Award by the American Bar Association’s IP Law Section and designated a “Titan of the IP Bar” by the American Intellectual Property Law Association.

Mr. Hampton maintained his advocacy in the DEI space while serving as Assistant Commissioner for Trademarks in the United States Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) during the Clinton administration. Minority attorneys increased by more than 400 percent during that time. While in this role, he also promulgated almost 200 Commissioner’s Decisions and oversaw the first new edition of the Manual of Trademark Examining Procedure in almost ten years.

Mr. Hampton has been an expert witness in almost three dozen trademark infringement actions and has served as a Special Master in several patent infringement actions for the U.S. District Court for the District of Maryland. He also teaches trademark law at Howard University School of Law, where he has served as an adjunct professor for more than a decade.

His impressive career within the Association spans many committees and many different initiatives, but Mr. Hampton has most prominently supported and contributed to INTA’s Political Action Committee (PAC) and the Association’s advocacy efforts in the U.S.

Through his decades-long involvement in INTA, Mr. Welch has made invaluable contributions to the intellectual property (IP) community. Mr. Welch has served on The Trademark Reporter® (TMR) since 2004, co-authored the United States Annual Review issue of the TMR since 2012, and co-presented the Annual Review of U.S. Federal Case Law and TTAB Developments at the Annual Meeting also since 2012. In 2022, Mr. Welch was selected as part of INTA’s Recognition of High-Performing Committee Members Program for his dedication to and advancement of the TMR Committee. As the author behind the widely read TTABlog, Mr. Welch’s voice is one that is listened to and respected throughout the IP community.  

Ms. Cendali has served INTA for more than two decades, including on the Board of Directors and as INTA Counsel from 2010 through 2011, and as Founding Chair of the Copyright Committee in 2016. In an extraordinary achievement, she took the important first steps to help change a U.S. Copyright Office rule that disallowed copyright protection for designs that serve as logos. She has built an important legacy within the global Intellectual Property community and has litigated IP issues before the U.S. Supreme Court.

Mr. Soerensen Garcia has been a committed and active INTA member for more than 20 years, acting as an effective changemaker within the Association, with a nuanced understanding of the issues, an ability to move ideas forward, and a gift for inclusion. A member of the Board of Directors from 2010 through 2013, and Co-Chair of the 2015 Annual Meeting, he has also served in various capacities on committees, including the Alternative Dispute Resolution Committee, Leadership Development Committee, and the Building Bridges Committee. As an energetic and intentional Association ambassador, he has facilitated interactions between INTA and the Inter-American Association of Industrial Property and Pharmaceutical Trade Marks Group. His efforts are always steeped in enthusiasm and focused on moving individuals and the IP community forward, gathering all to feel included.

An IP trailblazer, Mr. Anand has been a practicing attorney since 1979 when he joined Anand and Anand, an extension of the one-room law firm that his grandfather established in 1923. Since, Mr. Anand has expanded the firm to four major cities with 400 professionals. His practice encompasses all areas of IP litigation, including patents, copyright, design, trademarks, enforcement, and dispute resolution.

A dedicated INTA volunteer for decades, he has served on many committees, project teams, and task forces, and on INTA’s Board of Directors from 2006 to 2008.

Mr. Anand’s countless accomplishments include several landmark IP cases which have maintained the protection of creatives and led to extensive growth of India’s IP jurisprudence. Among them are the Ferid Allani case, which paved the way for software patenting in India; the Christian Louboutin case, which protected the famous red sole as a single-color trademark in India; Philips v Amazestore, a landmark judgment on aggravated damages for IP infringers, and many more.

Recent work includes the Tommy Hilfiger Europe case, in which Mr. Anand argued for consumer health and trust in the face of counterfeit personal protective equipment that featured trademarks of well-known brands.

Ms. Quadrio has been practicing at the law firm—the largest in Argentina— as a partner since 1998. She has extensive experience in trademarks, trade dress, copyright, and other IP issues.

A long-time active member of INTA who served on the Board of Directors from 2006 to 2008, Ms. Quadrio has a long and well-deserved history of receiving accolades for her volunteer work at the Association.

She received INTA’s Volunteer Service Award for the Advancement of the Association in 2009 for “guiding the formation and leadership of the Latin America Council,” as well as for her involvement in legislative initiatives and collaborative efforts in the region. Earlier, in 2004, she was recognized with the Volunteer Service Award for Advancement of Committee or Subcommittee Objectives for her role as chair of the Trademark Office Practices Committee, Examination Subcommittee.

During her two decades as an INTA volunteer, Ms. Quadrio also served as chair of the International Amicus Committee, and the Treaty Analysis Committee, and as vice chair of the Leadership Development Committee, among other roles. Currently, she is a member of the Non-Traditional Marks Committee, the Programming Advisory Council, and the 2021 Presidential Task Force on Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion.

At the time of receiving this award, Anna Carboni had already committed more than 25 years to INTA, including serving on the Association’s Board of Directors from 2012 to 2013. She served as INTA’s Counsel in 2018 and 2019, becoming the first practitioner outside of North America to hold that position at the Association. During her time as Counsel, Ms. Carboni oversaw the revision of INTA’s Code of Policies to ensure that they provide a best-practice platform from which the Association can continue to advance its work.

In the 2020–2021 Committee Term, she is serving on the Alternative Dispute Resolution Committee and as the European Union contributor to the Trademark Cancellations Practice Guide. In 2016, Ms. Carboni eagerly responded to INTA’s request to participate in its Brexit Task Force, representing INTA members’ interests and advocating before the UK government on various IP issues related to the United Kingdom’s separation from the European Union.

In addition to her countless accomplishments at INTA, Ms. Carboni has made significant contributions to IP law through her judicial and quasi-judicial appointments. She was an Appointed Person hearing trademark appeals from the UK IP Office for more than seven years. She has been a Nominet Dispute Resolution Service Expert since 2004 and is an accredited mediator for The Centre for Effective Dispute Resolution. Ms. Carboni is also a thought leader in the IP world, sitting on the editorial boards of the European Trade Mark Reports and the Journal of Intellectual Property Law & Practice. She has published chapters on mediation in IP cases and overlapping rights. In 2007, Anna joined a group of IP lawyers from around world to climb Mount Kilimanjaro in Tanzania, raising a considerable amount of money along the way for ActionAid, an organization dedicated to ending poverty.

Mladen Vukmir has participated on a staggering number and variety of committees, project teams, and advocacy groups at INTA for more than two decades. He’s also assumed several leadership positions, including as member of INTA’s Board of Directors from 2012 to 2014 and chairing the Brands and Innovation Committee during the 2018–2019 Committee Term.

One of Mr. Vukmir’s passions is corporate social responsibility (CSR) and, as such, he has embraced INTA’s focus, as part of its Strategic Plan, on CSR and sustainability. In the 2020–2021 Committee Term, he is a member of the Association’s Brands for a Better Society Committee. And, in 2017, he co-chaired INTA’s Brand Authenticity Conference in Berlin, Germany, which explored the powerful impact CSR, sustainability, and integrity can have had on brand value and business results. Also on the CSR front, Mr. Vukmir and his firm have committed to supporting a private venture developing a way to sequester carbon by the deployment of “marine snow,” designed to beat global warming and contribute to the creation of a better planet. To raise awareness about the importance of CSR initiatives, Mr. Vukmir interviewed his business partner who developed the technology to produce marine snow, and authorized INTA to post the video interview on its YouTube channel.

Among his numerous accomplishments in Croatia, Mr. Vukmir has been appointed by the Government of the Republic of Croatia to serve as a member of the Board of Appeals for Patents and Topographies. He has also written and lectured on various IP topics, including regularly teaching as an adjunct lecturer at the University of Zagreb Faculty of Law.

Lara Kayode is Founder and Managing Partner at O. Kayode and Co. and has been practicing law since 1992. Volunteering at INTA for nearly 20 years, she has participated on various committees, contributing to advocacy and policy work, educational programs, and legal resources. She served on the Board from 2012 to 2015.

Ms. Kayode has contributed significantly to INTA’s anticounterfeiting efforts. For example, in 2010, while volunteering on the Anticounterfeiting Committee, she, together with fellow Committee member Uche Nwokocha, took the lead in organizing and hosting INTA’s first official anticounterfeiting program in Nigeria. During the 2018‒2019 Committee Term, Ms. Kayode chaired INTA’s Unreal Campaign Committee, Asia and Africa Subcommittee. Under her leadership in the region, INTA’s awareness initiative for young consumers had exceptional growth—including a 172 percent increase in the number of students reached and a 67 percent increase in the number of events held.

Marion Heathcote, Principal at Davies Collison Cave, has been a volunteer with INTA for nearly two decades. She has been a member of various committees, contributing to INTA’s advocacy, educational programs, and publications. She served on the Board from 2005 to 2008 and has been a member of the Asia-Pacific Global Advisory Council since 2014.

In 2009, INTA presented Ms. Heathcote with the INTA Volunteer Service Award for the Advancement of Trademark Law for her work in championing indigenous rights regionally and globally. She served as the inaugural chair of the Indigenous Rights Committee from 2016 to 2018. During her time as chair, the Committee helped INTA provide pro bono assistance to the World Intellectual Property Organization’s (WIPO) Traditional Knowledge Division for capacity-building workshops held in Iqualit, Laos, the Philippines, and Western Samoa to guide indigenous peoples and local communities in understanding the IP system. This led to INTA’s involvement in WIPO’s new “Project-Based Training and Mentoring Program on Intellectual Property for Women Entrepreneurs from indigenous Peoples and Local Communities.”