2018 New York Conference: Brands & Innovation

Registration and Information Desk Open

Networking Breakfast

Welcome and Opening Remarks

Tish Berard, Hearts on Fire Company LLC (United States)

Etienne Sanz de Acedo, International Trademark Association (United States)

Conference Co-Chairs:
Monique Joe, NBCUniversal Media, LLC (United States)
Diane Lau, Facebook, Inc. (United States)

A Fireside Chat with Caterina Fake, co-founder of Yes VC

Caterina Fake, leading entrepreneur, innovator, and investor, will discuss the profound ways in which innovation changes lives and how she has helped to create a better tomorrow for us all.

Ms. Fake will share her thoughts on how innovation has impacted the world we live in and how it’s driven her career. After co-founding both Flickr and the recommendation engine Hunch—sold to Yahoo and eBay, respectively—she joined Etsy when it had only four employees. She also served on the board and as Chairman until just before Etsy’s 2015 IPO. Recently she launched Yes VC, a pre-seed and seed-stage capital firm.

Ms. Fake has won various awards, including Businessweek’s Best Leaders of 2005, Forbes’ 2005 eGang, Fast Company’s Fast 50, and Red Herring’s 20 Entrepreneurs under 35. She was named in Time magazine’s list of the world’s 100 most influential people in 2006.

Hear her journey from English Literature major to venture capitalist in a Fireside Chat with our conference co-chairs, Monique Joe, NBCUniversal Media, LLC (United States) and Diane Lau, Facebook, Inc. (United States).

Session I—The Alphabet of Innovation

No longer relegated to the tech world, innovation is a key driver of all industries in all geographies. This session will help attendees learn the key terms of art and a myriad of acronyms so they can be savvy in their discussions with clients, customers, and their 7-year-old child/cousin/neighbor. This interactive session will help the practitioner go from AI (artificial intelligence) and AR (augmented reality) to VR (virtual reality) and those places between.

Speakers:
Deborah Davis, Electronic Arts Inc. (United States)
Diane Lau, Facebook, Inc. (United States)

Networking Break

Session II—What Every Brand Lawyer Needs to Know

To be effective, brand lawyers need to be strategic partners to their business teams/clients. With the fast pace that innovation and technology brings, our role is not limited to trademark advice but a myriad of issues that need to be addressed early in any project timeline. The proliferation of information is also confounded by the expectation of shorter turnaround times. This session will help brand lawyers be more effective in counseling clients on key issues they should be addressing, and by leveraging some case studies, attendees will leave the session with a toolkit of the questions to ask, the pitfalls to avoid, and the strategies to consider to help businesses leverage their IP rights to their full advantage in a timely and efficient manner.

Moderator:
Salvador Ferrandis, Salvador Ferrandis IP Legal SLP (Spain)

Speakers:
Angela Byun, Condé Nast (United States)
Elena Grimme, Microsoft Corporation (United States)
Jeremy Kaufman, Netflix, Inc. (United States)
Pamela Mallari, Mars, Inc. (United States)

Networking Lunch

Session III—The Evolution of Brands: How Innovation Is Changing the Retail Landscape

As consumers increasingly shop online, retailers need to adapt their business model to meet changing consumer demands. Now consumers can experience their favorite retailers through an online app, utilize augmented reality to get the look and feel of a product before they buy it, influence social media by expressing their buying decisions online, and so much more. To meet consumer demands, retailers are relying on big data, augmented reality, and more! Hear from leading experts on how to counsel clients through this changing maze to ensure that IP protection and enforcement efforts reflect the times and are nimble in this ever-changing landscape.

Moderator:
Jeffrey Kobulnick, Brutzkus Gubner Rozansky Seror Weber LLP (United States)

Speakers:
Stephen Jadie Coates, Amazon.com, Inc. (United States)
Sydney B. Schaub, Rent the Runway (United States)

Networking Break

Session IV—The Link Between Brand Value and Innovation – Concepts and Implications

Everyone talks about brands, from CEOs to advertisers to investors to consumers; what should I buy, why should I buy, and, what do brands mean. Needless to say, for many businesses, their brand is their most significant asset.

Trademarks, brand value, and innovation are often described in non-causal terms such as strong customer loyalty, brand identity, or brand innovation. These are used to support traditional valuation models without much emphasis on what is causal in the underlying assumptions. Annual reports tout the importance of trademarks and other intangible assets, but valuing a brand can be a difficult exercise for business and legal teams.

Additionally, Generation Y and Generation Z are changing traditional paradigms when it comes to brand choice and brand loyalty. Millennials are bombarded with more than 5,000 marketing messages a day. How can your brand be relevant to them? How can you build brand value by engaging younger consumers?

Hear from leading experts on how to reframe the discussion to focus on causal connections between trademarks and brand value, and how trademarks relate to unmeasured intangible assets. Also, learn more about cutting-edge research regarding trademarks and other proxies as predictors of innovation. Ultimately, during this session, participants will gain new insights in how to communicate the value of their brands to the C-suite and the “Street.”

Moderator:
Elisabeth Bradley, Bristol-Myers Squibb Company (United States)

Speakers:
Brian Daniel, Charles River Associates, Inc. (United States)
Andrea Gerosa, ThinkYoung (Switzerland)
Prof. Kyle Welch, George Washington University (United States)

Session V—Online Influencers: Successfully Managing Your Online Voice

The use of online influencers, as part of a brand’s wider promotional strategy, is here to stay. No longer exclusive to young hip labels targeting millennials, every brand can now find a representative online voice. But what do brand owners need to know? How do you manage these relationships? What are the risks and opportunities?
Hear from industry experts and influencers themselves, as the panel considers where we are now and what these relationships might look like in the future.

Moderator:
Paul Jordan, Bristows (United Kingdom)

Speakers:
Hannah Forbes. R/GA (United States)
Sara Perry, Universal Filmed Entertainment Group (United States)
Sophie Radcliffe, Adventure Athlete & Blogger at Challenge Sophie (United Kingdom)

Wrap-Up from Conference Co-Chairs

Pre-Annual Meeting Networking Reception

Conference registrants are offered an expanded networking event as they are invited to join INTA’s Pre-Annual Meeting Reception. This is an exclusive opportunity for local members and registrants who wish to learn more about the 2018 Annual Meeting in Seattle, WA.

Join us at the Copacabana Times Square, at 268 West 47th St, New York, New York, to learn more about the world’s largest and most widely attended trademark event and network with your colleagues.

Registration and Information Desk Open

Networking Breakfast

Welcome Back by Conference Co-Chairs

Monique Joe, NBCUniversal Media, LLC (United States)
Diane Lau, Facebook, Inc. (United States)

Keynote—Innovation for a Better Life, Better World

Natalie Hampton, a Los Angeles high school senior, anti-bullying activist, app developer, and the CEO of a non-profit called Sit With Us, Inc. (United States). In this session, she will share the inspirational story of how she uses innovation to act as a change agent, improve our communities, and inspire the world.

Ms. Hampton has received prestigious awards recognizing her innovative work, including the Star Champion Against Bullying, Global Teen Leader 2017 (from the Three Dot Dash Foundation), and Maker of Merit at Maker Faire San Diego. Natalie serves on PACER’s Teen Advisory Council and Champions Against Bullying’s Star Champion group.

Session VI—Brave New World: Providing Advice When Innovation Outpaces the Law

We live in a global world, where we communicate across borders with a click of a button. Innovation has provided companies with new and improved ways to serve their consumers across the world; unfortunately, those same innovative improvements have provided new ways for fraudsters to disserve the public. Internet service providers (ISPs) can delist search results, implement verification programs, offer “trusted site” services, warn you when you try to go to a site that is suspicious, etc. On the other hand, fraudsters can be equally innovative, creating increasingly legitimate-looking scams, including fake news sites linking to the sale of bogus products with bogus endorsements from companies and celebrities, and even altering real news articles from actual publications in doing so. Panelists will provide insights into the current state of affairs, including Section 230 of U.S. law providing immunity for online services publishing third-party content (with exceptions for criminal and IP claims) and attempt to answer these questions:

• Does Section 230 still work the way it’s supposed to and should the law be changed?
• How does one effectively enforce one’s national rights in a global world?

Moderator:
Kathleen McCarthy, King & Spalding LLP (United States)

Speaker:
Luca Guidobaldi, Nctm (Italy)
Tiffany C. Li, Yale Law School (United States)

Networking Break

Session VII—Innovation and Ethics

What are brand owners’ responsibilities when their goods or services are used in an unintended way? What happens when social media is used by third parties to saturate readers with fake news? Should companies self-police? How is a brand affected by fake reviews and how do consumers react? These and other important questions will be debated by a panel of experts.

Moderator:
Monique Joe, NBCUniversal Media, LLC (United States)

Speakers:
Lesley Fair, Federal Trade Commission (United States)
Prof. Alexander Krasnikov, Loyola University (United States)

Networking Lunch

Session VIII—Crisis Communications: Prepare, Prepare, Prepare!

Phishing schemes, data privacy breaches, and cyberattacks are becoming regular news items. As we welcome voice-activated tools in our homes to turn on our TVs, talk to our families, generate our grocery lists, and make everything in our homes available to us remotely, are we prepared for the potential misuse of innovation and unintended compromise of personal data? How brands address these issues is critical to maintaining brand value. Hear from cybersecurity and communications experts to understand the unintended avenues of risk and how these experts collaborate with brand lawyers to make sure that actions and communications are aligned to maintain brands in troubling times.

Moderator:
Claudia Schulz, BM&A – Barbosa, Mussnich & Aragao (Brazil)

Speakers:
Barrett B. Golden, Joele Frank, Wilkinson Brimmer Katcher (United States)
John LaCour, PhishLabs (United States)

Session IX—Cryptocurrency: Is it the New Money or the Hot New Tech Stock?

In recent months, Bitcoin, Litecoin, Ethereum, and other cryptocurrencies have been in the news. Hear from a leading expert who will lift the veil and help businesses understand how cryptocurrency works, how it is valued, the role of “miners,” and key opportunities and potential pitfalls of this new “money.”

Speaker:
Prof. Aaron J. Wright, Cardozo School of Law (United States)

Networking Break

Session X—What’s New in the Fight Against Counterfeits

Online counterfeiting is growing exponentially, and as innovation enhances the consumer’s one-click online buying experience, it is also being leveraged by counterfeiters to enhance their counterfeiting networks. Hear about the new technology and tools that are helping in the fight against counterfeits—including blockchain technology, enhanced online enforcement tools, artificial intelligence, and more!

Moderator:
Paul Brown, UL LLC (United States)

Speakers:
Julien Dudouit, eBay Inc. (United States)
Heather J. McDonald, Baker & Hostetler LLP (United States)
Jules Miller, IBM Corporation (United States)

Session XI—How Innovation Is Changing the IP Industry

Hear from leading experts and government officials on the ways that innovation is changing the way they work. This session will include such topics as collaborating with clients to streamline search and registration processes, reviewing trademark applications using artificial intelligence and e-Discovery, streamlining renewal processes, and how innovation could change the way systems operate. Hear real world examples of how innovation can help IP teams in their day-to-day responsibilities and how IP practitioners are doing more with less.

Moderator:
Conny Schmitt, Grunecker (Germany)

Speakers:
Cristina Carvalho, Arent Fox LLP (United States)
Tiffany Valeriano, Corsearch (Germany)
Dan Vavonese, United States Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO)(United States)

Closing Remarks and Thank You

This conference qualifies for Continuing Legal Education (CLE) credits and Continuing Professional Development (CPD) points. For more information, please email [email protected].

Tuition assistance may be available to eligible professionals on the basis of financial hardship. For more information and to apply, please request an application by sending an email to [email protected]. Proper documentation will be required.