A list of panels and speakers have been announced for the 2025 Intellectual Property Awareness Summit®, which is being held in conjunction Dolby Labs at their iconic headquarters in San Francisco.

IPAS 2025 panels include:

• Unbundling AI’s role in innovation, creative expression and IP rights
• Current Patent and trade secret strategies and AI – Generating value and return
• China, the U.S. and the shifting IP landscape
• Transparency Matters – Tracking content source and changes to prevent abuse
• Entrepreneurs and investors: Identifying the latest IP challenges and opportunities

Confirmed or soon to be confirmed speakers include:

• AI systems architect – Arlyn Simon, Intel biomedical engineer; author, ‘Abby Invents’)
• Policymaker – Jerry Ma (USPTO AI Director)
• Licensing/monetization – Louis Carboneau (Tangible IP, ex-MSFT licensing exec)
• Valuation/M&A – Efrat Kasznik (Foresight Valuation; Stanford Business School)
• IP Hall of Fame – Brian Hinman (ex-Philips IP chief, IBM, InterDigital, Aon; Verizon) 
• Xerox-PARC-SRI – Mike Waltrip (Director IP strategy and commercialization) 
• China IP expert – Mark Cohen (ex-Microsoft, USPTO and UC Berkeley)
• Leading innovation and IP analyst – Adam Mosssoff (George Mason Law; 100+ articles)
• Representative of Tencent, Alibaba or a similar company
• Dolby-Beijing – Matt Roberts (Dir of Policy & Business) 
• Bloomberg News, San Francisco – Malathi Nayak (IP and litigation reporter)
• Stanford VP of Technology (ret) – Kathy Ku
• Talal Shamoon, CEO, Intertrust Technologies, DRM specialists; inventor 22 patents 

The theme this year is “Innovation, AI and Ownership – Building a Bridge to the future.”

For the current agenda and list of speakers visit the IP Awareness Summit website.

Innovation + Content + AI + IP 

2025 marks the 8th IPA Summit for the Center for Intellectual Property Understanding, a nonpartisan nonprofit that partners with dozens of businesses, inventors, content creators, IP organizations and universities. Previous Summits have been held in conjunction with Northwestern University (twice) (McCormack School of Engineering and Kellogg School of Management).

Other partners have included UC Berkeley, Haas School of Business (twice); Northeastern University’s Center for Innovation Research; Columbia University, with Columbia Technology Ventures, and Chicago-Kent College of Law and Illinois Institute of Technology.

A Featured Speaker

Confirmed feature speaker, inventor and “Shark Tank,” contestant Akeem Shannon, who faced personal demons and patent office obstacles on his way to establishing Flipstick, a start up that eventually generated $10 million in sales with the help of Snoop Dogg and AT&T.

An  episode on the popular podcast, “Understanding IP Matters” with your IP CloseUp editor, Bruce Berman, features Akeem sharing his amazing story. The title is From psych ward to ‘Shark Tank’ – How this entrepreneur overcame personal demons and business obstacles. Listen on the platform of your choice.

Save on Early-Bird Registration

Early bird registration gives businesses and IP owners a 20% discount, use IPAS25CORP; nonprofits, government and educators 25% off the already discounted price for that group, use IPASNFP. Students who register now pay only a nominal fee, use code IPASSTUD.

To register tap here.

Image source: Center for IP Understanding; ipawarenesssummit.com