McAndrews Shareholder Christopher V. Carani to Speak at USPTO’s Seventh Annual Design Day 2013 Conference
04.16.13
McAndrews, Held & Malloy Shareholder Christopher V. Carani will present at the U.S. Patent & Trademark Office’s (USPTO) Design Day 2013: Designs in the New Digital Age, on April 22, 2013. Chris, along with co-presenters Charles L. Mauro (Mauro New Media) and Robert S. Katz (Banner & Witcoff), will speak before the USPTO’s patent examiners and discuss current design patent jurisprudence along with issues on how errors in prosecution can ultimately impact enforcement efforts.
At Design Day 2013, Chris will join other attorneys, judges, examiners and industrial designers from across the country to exchange ideas and educate each other on important issues impacting the design patent practice. Topics include:
- How the USPTO is preparing to examine applications filed under the Hague Agreement
- Rules and techniques relating to claiming icons and graphical user interfaces in the United States and Japan
- Microsoft’s design patent portfolio
- Design patents in post-grant proceedings
- Best practices to obtain the strongest protection of industrial designs in the United States
Chris is a leading authority in the field of design law. He currently chairs the American Bar Association’s Design Rights Committee, and is the past chair of the American Intellectual Property Law Association’s Committee on Industrial Designs. He has litigated numerous disputes regarding design rights and has served as a legal consultant and expert witness in design law cases in a wide-range of industries, including consumer electronics and accessories, consumer retail products, furniture, medical devices, apparel and footwear, and sporting goods, to name a few.
After earning his engineering degree from Marquette University and his law degree from the University of Chicago, Chris served as a law clerk to the Honorable Rebecca Pallmeyer at the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Illinois. He is a registered patent attorney and licensed to practice before the USPTO.
Chris is frequent contributor to CNN on intellectual property law issues, and is often called upon to provide commentary to other major media outlets, including New York Times, Wall Street Journal, Forbes, NPR, PBS TV, CNBC TV, BBC, Bloomberg TV, and Reuters. Away from the law, Chris is a studied jazz musician who plays upright bass on the Chicago jazz circuit.
Follow Chris on Twitter: https://twitter.com/ccarani.