Demystifying Design Rights and the Hague System

Dunstan H. Barnes is a partner at McAndrews, Held, and Malloy, Ltd. in Chicago, Illinois. He practices in all areas of intellectual property law, with a special focus on protecting design rights. Dunstan currently chairs the American Bar Association (ABA) Design Rights Committee and vice chairs the American Intellectual Property Law Association (AIPLA) Industrial Designs Committee.  He has been an invited speaker at conferences including the AIPPI World Congress, AIPLA Annual Meeting, ABA-IPL Spring Meeting, and USPTO Design Day.

Grégoire Bisson is the Director of The Hague Registry, at the World Intellectual Property Organization (Geneva). In this capacity, he is directly responsible for the management and development of the Hague Agreement for the International Registration of Industrial Designs. His previous positions with WIPO included heading the Legal Service supporting the development of, and the operations under the Madrid, Hague and Lisbon systems. He joined WIPO in 1995 after a short stint with the Canadian Trade-Mark Opposition Board. Before that, he was Senior Legal Advisor with the Canadian Federal Government, overseeing in particular the drafting of the TRIPS implementing legislation, and lectured on the legal aspects of transfer of technology at the University of Ottawa from 1992 to 1994. He has co-edited a book on this topic, and has published or contributed to many articles on various IP issues.

Elizabeth R. Kendall serves as Corporate Counsel, Intellectual Property for Caterpillar Inc. where she utilizes her keen research skills and experience in both law and technology to help optimize intellectual property protection to best fit business needs. A background in graphic design and the niche area of Nuclear Engineering led to her drafting and prosecuting design, plant, and utility patent applications across the full gamut of arts and sciences. Additionally, she enjoys sharing weekly updates in design patent law through her Impeccable IP blog at impeccableip.com

Richard S. Stockton advises clients on all aspects of intellectual property law, including tactical and strategic counseling, portfolio management, litigation and prosecution matters. Richard earned a Bachelor of Science degree in Electrical Engineering from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign (UI) in 1997. He graduated from the UI College of Law cum laude in 2000. Richard also has governmental relations and policy experience. He has prepared draft legislation, and served as a legislative extern to the Illinois House of Representatives. Richard also interned in Congress.