Christopher V. Carani, Esq. is a partner and shareholder at McAndrews.  He is an internationally recognized authority in the field of design law, which regards the protection and enforcement of product design through the use of design patents, copyrights, trade dress and international counterparts to these IP rights.  He has litigated numerous disputes regarding design rights and has served as a legal consultant and expert witness in design law cases.  In addition to his extensive bibliography, Carani is often invited to speak on the topic including presentation s at the United States Patent &Trademark Office (Washington D.C.), the World Intellectual Property Office (Geneva, Switzerland), and the European Union’s Office of Harmonization of the Internal Markets (Alicante, Spain).

Carani currently chairs the American Bar Associations Committee on Design Rights; previously and for 6 years Carani chaired the American Intellectual Property Law Association ‘s(“AIPLA”) Industrial Designs Committee.  In the landmark design patent case Egyptian Goddess v. Swisa, which reshaped the law on design patents, Carani represented the amicus curiae American Intellectual Property Law Association (“AIPLA”), at both the petition and en banc phases.

After earning his law degree from the University of Chicago and engineering degree from Marquette University, Mr. Carani served as a law clerk to the Honorable Rebecca J. Pallmeyer at the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Illinois. He is a registered patent attorney licensed to practice before the USPTO.

Christopher V. Carani, Esq. helps the world’s most innovative companies protect themselves in a highly competitive marketplace.  Mr. Katz is a partner in the Washington D.C. office of the intellectual property law firm Banner & Witcoff and his practices focuses on design and utility patents.  Both nationally and internationally, Mr. Katz is considered as a premier practitioner in the field of industrial designs leading the way in the procurement and enforcement of design patents. He has helped Banner & Witcoff’s clients procure more than 3,500 design patents, and has helped to successfully enforce more 100 design patents.   Mr. Katz has also drafted and prosecuted to issuance numerous and significant utility patents in the U.S. and in foreign countries.  Many of these patents have been successfully enforced with some having served as the cornerstone for the successful sale of companies. He is a former USPTO Utility Patent Examiner and has degrees from Carnegie-Mellon and George Washington University Law School.

 

MODERATOR

 

Christopher V. Carani, Esq. Charles L Mauro, CHFP is President of MauroNewMedia, a New York-based consulting firm specializing in usability engineering and user interface design, founded in 1975. Over his 35 year career, Charles has been retained by many leading corporations and startups covering a wide range of industry sectors, including financial services, consumer products, industrial systems, and military applications. He holds numerous US and international patents covering UX and product design. He has been responsible for complex UX design solutions currently running on major world markets. Charles is the Chairman of the Design Protection Section of the Industrial Designers Society of America and is the IDSA liaison to the USPTO for Design Day 2011-12. He has lectured on UX design and usability at MIT, Stanford University and other leading educational institutions. Charles has been retained as an expert witness in over 50 major cases representing leading high technology companies covering UX and product design patent litigation. He has received awards and citations from the Human Factors and Ergonomics Society, Association of Computing Machines and, NASA. He has been quoted in Science, New York Times, BusinessWeek, Wall Street Journal. He writes on UX related trends on the blog Pulse>UX. He has a BS in Industrial Design from The Los Angeles Art Center College of Design and a Masters Degree in Ergonomics and Biomechanics from NYU. Mr. Mauro is also the founder and leader of the NYTECH event series “Designing the User Experience”.