Credit: U.S. International Trade CommissionWait! Don’t leave! One of the capstone CLE events of the 28th Annual Intellectual Property Law Conference in Arlington, VA this year covers the topic of Section 337 investigations. The CLE session will take place on Friday, April 5th, from 3:30 PM until 5:00 PM in Salon IV of the Arlington Ballroom. Plus, the program is eligible for ethics credit!
Section 337 of the Tariff Act of 1930 is used most often in the area of intellectual property to prohibit the unfair methods of competition or other unfair acts in the importation of goods into the United States. Claims include allegations of patent infringement and trademark infringement by imported goods.
The CLE program takes a look at the growing number of investigations by U.S. International Trade Commission and how both in-house counsel and outside counsel manage Section 337 investigations. “We are seeking to educate IP practitioners and ITC practitioners on the ethical issues that arise in ITC investigations, particularly in the relationship between in-house and outside counsel,” says Ms. Kimberly R. Parke, an associate in Dickstein Shapiro LLP’s Intellectual Property Practice in Washington, D.C.
Ms. Parke continues, “At the ITC, in-house counsel cannot see the vast majority of the evidence and pleadings in the investigation, which creates issues for an in-house counsel to make decisions about the investigation.”
So why should both in-house and outside counsel attorneys attend this event? Ms. Parke says, “Our panel is beneficial to in-house counsel who want to learn more about how to steer an ITC investigation. We will have several in-house counsel speaking on their experiences steering ITC investigations. From an outside counsel perspective, it is always helpful to hear what in-house counsel find challenging about your area of work.”
The program will be moderated by Monisha Deka, an Investigative Attorney at the U.S. International Trade Commission, Office of Unfair Import Investigations in Washington D.C. Additional program speakers include Karin J. Norton, Counsel for Samsung Electronics in Washington, D.C., Kimberly R. Parke, an associate in Dickstein Shapiro LLP’s Intellectual Property Practice in Washington, D.C., John Thorne, Partner at Kellogg, Huber, Hansen, Todd, Evans & Figel, P.L.L.C. in Washington, D.C., and Vaishali Udupa, IP Litigation Manager at Hewlett-Packard in Herndon, VA.
Follow the speakers of this CLE program on Twitter: Kimberly Parke (@Dickstein_LLP).
If you can’t make it to the 28th Annual ABA Intellectual Property Law Section Spring Conference this year, you can still follow all the action by following the tweets and blog entries of the ABA-IPL’s Law Student Reporters, who will be covering all the events of the Conference on Twitter. You do not have to sign up for Twitter to follow the Law Student Reports. Just bookmark http://bit.ly/IPLSpring and revisit the link from April 3-5, 2013 to follow all the action.
The “From the Inside Looking Out: An In-House Counsel Perspective on US International Trade Commission Investigations” CLE program will be covered by the following Law Student Reports: Franklin Graves, a second-year law student at Belmont University College of Law in Nashville, TN, and Mannu Harnal, a third-year law student at University of New Hampshire School of Law in Concord, NH.