Tech-Based Intellectual Property Workshop Coming to Milwaukee Friday 15 May

WASHINGTON, May 7, 2015 /PRNewswire-USNewswire/ -- Many entrepreneurs start a technology-based business without knowing how to protect the revenue-generating portion of their business – the intellectual property. Don't be one of them.

IEEE-USA is sponsoring a workshop, "Rightful Owners: Intellectual Property Protection and Innovation" at the Hilton Milwaukee City Center on Friday 15 May. The sessions are designed for IP lawyers, entrepreneurs and funding partners. PDHs and CLEs are being offered.

Major topic areas include recent changes to patent law, intellectual property, innovation and tech start-ups. The latter are those that focus on electrical, chemical and mechanical engineering, computer science and software. Sessions include:

• Introduction & IP Overview
• Seven (Small) Steps to Protecting Big Trade Secrets & Confidential Information
• Cybersecurity Threats to Your Trade Secrets & IP
• Who Owns What & How Do You Protect It?
• Patentable Subject Matter & Software Patents
• Inter Partes & Post Grant Review of Issued Patents
• Engineers to Entrepreneurs

Winslow Sargeant, former chief counsel of advocacy, U.S. Small Business Administration, will deliver the lunch keynote. He, others from SBA and Mark Wingate, chair of the IEEE-USA Entrepreneurship and Innovation Policy Committee, highlight an after-lunch panel discussion on start-up funding.

Additional speakers include attorneys Michael Gratz, John Fredrickson, Adam Brookman, Michael Griggs and Eric Schlevensky of Milwaukee's Boyle Fredrickson, S.C., Wisconsin's largest IP law firm. FBI Special Agent Byron Franz will lead the cybersecurity session.

Keith Grzelak, chair of the IEEE-USA Intellectual Property Committee and director, Wells St. John PC of Spokane, Wash., is heading the workshop. He previously worked for GM and Ford Motor Co. as a safety and crashworthiness engineer.

The all-day event is part of the IEEE-USA Annual Meeting and Great Lakes Biomedical Conference (http://sites.ieee.org/glbc/), 14-17 May. Check out the full schedule: http://sites.ieee.org/glbc/program/schedule/.

The IEEE-USA Annual Meeting brings together IEEE volunteer leaders from across the country to share best practices, receive basic leadership training and gain program ideas they can employ in their home sections. The theme for the Great Lakes Biomedical Conference is, "Biomedical Applications of Additive Manufacturing (3-D printing)."

IEEE-USA serves the public good and promotes the careers and public policy interests of more than 200,000 engineering, computing and technology professionals who are U.S. members of IEEE.  

Web: www.ieeeusa.org
Facebook: www.facebook.com/ieeeusa
Twitter: www.twitter.com/ieeeusa
Benefits of IEEE membership: www.ieee.org/join  

SOURCE IEEE-USA