Keynote Speaker

Dean Alderucci is the Director of Research for the Center for AI & Patent Analysis at Carnegie Mellon University, the world’s first research center devoted to developing AI for the patent domain. In this position he conducts and leads original research in Natural Language Processing and Machine Learning algorithms that are tailored to the unique challenges of patent law and practice. This work includes developing AI software that better understands patents, patent claims, patent prosecution tasks, patentablity requirements, and patent practice work flows. Much of this research involves translating aspects of patent law, patent prosecution, and legal reasoning into novel data sets, neural network architectures, and algorithm training strategies.

Dean frequently speaks on applying AI to the IP field and to the legal domain. He also advises corporations and law firms on best practices for implementing Machine Learning and Natural Language Processing technologies, and on creating customized AI tools for the legal domain.

He was previously Chief IP counsel for a global financial services firm, and before that Chief Counsel for a business incubator. He has taught graduate courses in innovation strategy, Intellectual Property, and Natural Language Processing at the University of Chicago, New York University, Carnegie Mellon University, and Dartmouth College. He is a Fellow of the National Academy of Inventors.

Dr. Terry Bray is the Director of Technology Licensing at Georgia Tech Research Corporation (GTRC) and has 30 years experience in the creation, development, and commercialization of innovative technologies. Prior to joining GTRC, he held positions as the Executive Vice President of Business Development at Atherotech Diagnostics Lab, at the University of Alabama at Birmingham (UAB) as the Director of Physical Sciences in the UAB Institute for Innovation and Entrepreneurship (formerly the UAB Research Foundation), in the Office of Technology Transfer at North Carolina State University as a Senior Licensing Associate, and at UAB as a researcher and faculty member in the department of Biomedical Engineering. Dr. Bray has extensive experience the management, patenting, and licensing of intellectual property, as well as facilitating start-up company formation and economic development. While a researcher at UAB, Dr. Bray developed several technologies that were commercialized and is an inventor on several issued patents. Dr. Bray holds a B.S. in chemistry from Mercer University, a M.S. in chemistry from the Georgia Institute of Technology, and a Ph.D. in chemistry from the University of Alabama at Birmingham.

Deven Desai is a professor at the Georgia Institute of Technology, Scheller College of Business. He joined the faculty in fall of 2014 in the Law and Ethics Program. He was also the first and, to date, only Academic Research Counsel at Google, Inc., and a Visiting Fellow at Princeton University’s Center for Information Technology Policy.

Professor Desai’s scholarship examines how business interests, new technology, and economic theories shape privacy and intellectual property law and where those arguments explain productivity or where they fail to capture society’s interest in the free flow of information and development. His work has appeared in leading law reviews and journals including the Georgetown Law Journal, Minnesota Law Review, Notre Dame Law Review, Florida Law Review, Wisconsin Law Review, U.C. Davis Law Review, Brigham Young University Law Review, and Harvard Journal of Law and Technology.

Prior to becoming a professor, Desai has been a litigator handing intellectual property and technology matters with Quinn, Emanuel, Urquhart, & Sullivan, LLP, in-house counsel for an idealab! Internet infrastructure company, and part of the policy and fundraising teams on the 2002 Cory Booker for Mayor campaign.

Professor Desai has been interviewed about 3D printing, intellectual property, privacy, and technology by the New York Times, the Atlanta Journal-Constitution, NBC News, and the news show, Take Part Live. He has blogged about technology, intellectual property, and privacy at Concurring Opinions.

He is a graduate of the University of California, Berkeley with highest honors and the Yale Law School, where he was co-editor-in-chief of the Yale Journal of Law & the Humanities.

Amir R. Ghavi is a corporate partner resident in Fried Frank’s New York office and leads the Firm’s Technology Transactions Practice. Mr. Ghavi concentrates his practice on intellectual property transactions on behalf of multinational corporations, private equity sponsors, and venture capital firms in a variety of industry sectors, including software, financial technology, high-technology, aerospace, banking and insurance, biotechnology, pharmaceutical, and energy and industrial sectors.

Chad Rutkowski’s practice focuses on the intersection of copyright and technology. As co-lead of BakerHostetler’s Digital Transformation and Data Economy team, he assists clients in the midst of the “digital transformation,” helping them identify and capture the intellectual property (IP) in their valuable data, algorithms, and enterprise software. Clients rely on him to help identify their IP, to build internal processes for its management, navigate open source and other open innovation strategies, and to create licensing programs that enable full value realization. He further protects that value in disputes and litigation, whether through enforcing his clients’ IP rights or fending off attacks by competitors.

Chad is the principal author of the firm’s Beyond Source Code web tool, which digests all court decisions addressing the scope of copyright protection in the non-literal elements of source code. Chad writes and presents regularly on the robust protections afforded by copyright law to software, data, artificial intelligence, and related innovations. He has helped his clients protect innovations in healthcare technology, water management, smart cities, population health management, and online consumer lending.

Chad’s interest in how IP law has adapted to digital transformation began in his former role as a founder and business manager of a digital media publisher. Drawing from his professional and legal experiences, he co-leads the firm’s Technology & IP Transactions and Outsourcing practice team and contributes regularly to the firm’s IP blogs. Additionally, he is an active member of the Copyright Society of the USA and the ABA IP Law Section. Chad is AV Preeminent-rated by Martindale-Hubbell and has been voted by his peers as a Pennsylvania Super Lawyer and Rising Star.