AI Inventorship Listening Session - West Coast

Derrick Brent is the Deputy Under Secretary of Commerce for Intellectual Property and Deputy Director of the United States Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO). He serves as the principal advisor to Kathi Vidal, Under Secretary of Commerce for Intellectual Property and Director of the USPTO, for one of the largest intellectual property (IP) offices in the world, with more than 13,000 employees and an annual budget of more than $4 billion.

Deputy Director Brent has served in all three branches of the federal government and the private sector. He clerked for the Hon. Algenon L. Marbley, Chief Judge of the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of Ohio, and served for six years as a Senior Trial Attorney at the U.S. Department of Justice, Civil Rights Division, where he received a Special Achievement Award for his trial work. Also, he served as a Chief Counsel in the U.S. Senate, where handled IP issues along with other areas such as constitutional law, civil rights, and judicial nominations.

Deputy Director Brent’s experience in the private sector includes serving as Vice President/Associate General Counsel for Masimo, on the leadership team at Cut Golf, and as an engineer at General Motors.

Deputy Director Brent received a Bachelor of Science degree in mechanical engineering from The Ohio State University and a Juris Doctor degree from the Northwestern University School of Law (now the Northwestern University Pritzker School of Law).

Daniel E. Ho is the William Benjamin Scott and Luna M. Scott Professor of Law at Stanford Law School, Professor of Political Science, Senior Fellow at the Stanford Institute for Economic Policy Research, Associate Director of the Stanford Institute for Human-Centered Artificial Intelligence (HAI), and Director of the Regulation, Evaluation, and Governance Lab (RegLab).

Ho serves as an appointed member to the National Artificial Intelligence Advisory Commission (NAIAC), advising the White House National AI Initiative Office, and as Senior Advisor on Responsible AI to the U.S. Department of Labor. He is also a member of the Committee on National Statistics (CNSTAT) of the National Academies of Science, Engineering, and Medicine and a Public Member of the Administrative Conference of the United States (ACUS).

He received his J.D. from Yale Law School and Ph.D. from Harvard University and clerked for Judge Stephen F. Williams on the U.S. Court of Appeals, District of Columbia Circuit. He is the recipient of numerous awards, including the John Bingham Hurlbut Award for Excellence in Teaching at Stanford Law School, the Carole Hafner Award for the best paper at the International Conference on Artificial Intelligence and Law, the Best Empirical Paper Prize from the American Law and Economics Review, and the Warren Miller prize for the best paper published in Political Analysis.

Charles Kim currently serves as the Director of the Office of Petitions at the United States Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO). The Office of Petitions reviews and decides petitions, requests, and related inquiries, regarding the filing of patent applications, revival of abandoned applications, reinstatement of expired patents, withdrawal of patent applications from issue, small entity entitlement, review of previous decisions of the Technology Centers, suspension of regulations, and questions not specifically provided for by regulations.

Prior to working at the Office of Petitions, Charles served for two years as a Senior Advisor to the Deputy Commissioner for Patent Examination Policy. Charles also previously served as a Supervisory Patent Examiner in Technology Center 2100—Computer Architecture and Software.

Charles has a BS degree in Electrical Engineering from Rutgers University and received his JD degree from George Washington University Law School. 

Meredith Schoenfeld is an Associate Solicitor at the United States Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO), where she serves as legal counsel on intellectual property law matters. At the USPTO, Ms. Schoenfeld defends decisions by the Patent Trial and Appeal Board, among other responsibilities. Ms. Schoenfeld is a founding member of the USPTO’s Artificial Intelligence (AI) and Emerging Technology (ET) Working Group. This working group is comprised of AI experts from across the agency and has been responsible for several initiatives at the USPTO, including the issuance of request for comments, reports on AI and intellectual property policy, and the formation of the AI/ET Partnership, which was announced by Director Vidal in June 2022. Ms. Schoenfeld also acts a government liaison to the National AI Advisory Committee (NAIAC).  

Prior to her position at the USPTO, Ms. Schoenfeld worked as a senior patent attorney at Los Alamos National Laboratory in New Mexico and as an associate at a large IP law firm in Washington D.C.   

Ms. Schoenfeld is a graduate of Georgetown University Law School and holds a BSE in Mechanical Engineering and Applied Mathematics from the University of Pennsylvania.  

Joshua Schwartz received his B.A. from the University of Pennsylvania in 1997, his Juris Doctorate from Tulane University of Louisiana in 2000, his Master of Laws in Intellectual Property from The George Washington Law School in 2004, and his Master of Science in Electrical Engineering from The George Washington School of Engineering and Applied Science in 2008.  He has also taken graduate studies at The University of Texas and Arizona State University. He is admitted to practice law in DC, Maryland, Oklahoma, Texas, and Virginia. He worked for Oklahoma Supreme Court Justice Daniel Boudreau his first year out of law school, before entering private practice with multiple firms.  He left private practice for the USPTO in 2008, where he worked on technologies ranging from wireless and mobile communications, to image processing, to currently dealing with semiconductor memory devices.  He as a Director of The Young Lawyers Division of The Oklahoma Bar from 2003-2008.  He has served on the Patent and Trademark Office Society’s Board of Directors since 2010, serving as Administrator for two years.  He is a past Editor-in-Chief of The Journal of The Patent and Trademark Office Society (2010-2014) and is currently serving as its Executive Director.  He is an avid cyclist, woodworking enthusiast, and comic book aficionado.

Matthew Sked is a Senior Legal Advisor in the Office of Patent Legal Administration at the USPTO.  In this position, he drafts rule packages, memoranda, and associated guidance to implement USPTO initiatives and comply with developments in patent law.  He has been involved with the development of policy in such areas as subject matter eligibility under Section 101, artificial intelligence, claim construction under Section 112(f), information disclosure practice, and the duty of disclosure. Before joining the Office of Patent Legal Administration, he worked as a Primary Patent Examiner in the speech processing and audio coding arts. Matthew received his M.S. in Electrical Engineering from Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, and his J.D. from the George Mason University School of Law in 2010. 

Kathi Vidal serves as the Under Secretary of Commerce for Intellectual Property and Director of the United States Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) – America’s Innovation Agency. As the chief executive of the USPTO, she leads one of the largest intellectual property (IP) offices in the world, with more than 13,000 employees and an annual budget of nearly $4 billion. She is the principal IP advisor to the President and the Administration, through the Secretary of Commerce, and is focused on incentivizing and protecting U.S. innovation, entrepreneurship, and creativity, and helping American workers and businesses compete and collaborate, especially in key technology areas and across demographics. As Director of the USPTO, Vidal is working to expand American innovation for and from all, including serving as the Vice Chair of the Council for Inclusive Innovation (CI²), alongside Secretary of Commerce Gina M. Raimondo and the Council members.   

Prior to leading the USPTO, Director Vidal held top leadership positions at Winston & Strawn LLP and Fish & Richardson P.C. She has served a wide range of clients, from individual inventors and entrepreneurs, to some of our country’s most well-known and successful companies. Director Vidal holds bachelor’s and master’s degrees in electrical engineering, has five years of industry experience in manufacturing and design, and has deep technical expertise in a myriad of technologies, from consumer products to artificial intelligence. In her various roles, Director Vidal has received numerous accolades, created innovative initiatives and programs, and been recognized as a trailblazer and thought leader.  

Director Vidal’s full bio is available on the USPTO website.