Profile of JIPLP writers: Emir Aly Crowne-Mohammed

Emir Aly Crowne-Mohammed

In this, the fourth in JIPLP's occasional series of features on its authors, we focus on Canada-based Emir Aly Crowne-Mohammed, who has contributed a total of eight articles and current intelligence notes over the past two years.  Emir Aly tells us:

“For the past few years I’ve been a faculty member at the University of Windsor, Faculty of Law. My research interests lie primarily in intellectual property, gaming law, information technology law and legal education. Most of my research can be found on my SSRN site. Recently, I have also grown increasingly interested in the practical aspects of legal education. In previous years I taught legal research and writing within the Faculty, and this semester I’m teaching a course on contract drafting, which focuses on technology contracting.  My patents course is mainly assessed through a written factum exercise, and my torts class is also assessed primarily through a factum and moot.

Within the world of mooting (or moot court programs), I founded and co-chair the Harold G. Fox Intellectual Property Moot.  And this year I founded and co-chair the Donald G. Bowman National Tax Moot (named after the former Chief Justice of Canada’s Tax Court), and also chair the Black Law Students Association of Canada’s Diversity Moot. All three moots are national competitions open to law students throughout Canada, and elsewhere. My mooting ‘mania’ does not end there. I also run the Appellate Moot Training Program at the University of Windsor, Faculty of Law and have co-authored a book on the subject - The Essential Guide to Mooting (here).

Outside of these research and teaching interests, I’m also a Barrister and a Solicitor, an Executive member of our Faculty Union (VP of Status of Women, Diversity & Equity), a member of the University Senate, and Chair of a Judicial Panel at the University (dealing with academic and non-academic student misconduct). Externally, I sit on the Justices of the Peace Review Council (this has "a mandate to receive and investigate complaints against justices of the peace, review and approve standards of conduct, deal with the continuing education plan and decide whether a justice of the peace may engage in other remunerative work”), and am on the Editorial Board of the Gaming Law Review & Economics (here).

Outside of academia, my main obsession is squash. I can usually be found on the court at least five days a week, with the torn ACL (3x) and meniscus (1x) to prove it. But, I will happily accept all challengers – loser buys the first round (Heineken, Carib or Stella Artois please, and thank you).”

Profile of JIPLP writers: Eddy Ventose

Eddy Ventose

This is the third in an occasional series of features on contributors to JIPLP, it is our pleasure to Eddy Ventose.  Eddy has provided some of the more detailed and cogent analyses of European patent law to appear in the journal, as well as some punchy Current Intelligence pieces. So what is Eddy all about? Let him speak for himself:

"My interest in intellectual property started during my undergraduate years at the University of the West Indies, Cave Hill Campus, although the subject was not offered there at that time. I did intellectual property as part of the LLM at the University of Cambridge and decided subsequently to focus on patent law which I found most challenging and intellectually stimulating. This explains why I decided to read for the D,Phil in medical patent law at the University of Oxford.

I have been a Lecturer in Law at the University of the West Indies Cave Hill Campus for just over four years. I am currently the Deputy Dean (Graduate Studies and Research) and Director of the LL.M. Programmes.

My interests broadly relate, on the one hand, to the ways in which patent law can foster research and innovation in the pharmaceutical industry, and, on the other, to the ways in which in doing so it may encroach on the activities of physicians when they treat their patients. For now, I have focused on three main areas of my main research agenda in relation to intellectual property law: first, whether patent protection may be provided for methods of treatment of the human or animal body by surgery, therapy and diagnostic methods practised on the human or animal body; secondly, whether the development of new dosage or treatment regimes are patentable; and, thirdly the impact of the exclusion for methods of medical treatment will have on new technologies, namely, gene therapy, genetic production of diagnostic aids, cell bombardments, stem cell research and nanotechnology therapy. I have published broadly in this field and my book, Medical Patent Law: The Challenges of Methods of Medical Treatments, will be published by Edward Elgar Publishing in 2011.

I am also interested in other areas of intellectual property rights, having also published on personality rights, copyright law and trade mark law. Recently I set up a blog, IP in the Caribbean, which seeks to provide a focal point for the dissemination of new developments in and discussion on all aspects of intellectual property and related rights in the Commonwealth Caribbean.

I am also a consultant at Delany Finisterre, a Corporate and Commercial law firm in Barbados, specialising in intellectual property and corporate transactions. After training at City law firm Slaughter and May and being admitted as a Solicitor of the Supreme Court of England and Wales, I returned to the Caribbean to pursue an academic career and re-qualified as an Attorney-at-Law to practice law in the Caribbean.  I have a keen research interests in aspects of Caribbean public law, in particular legitimate expectations and exhaustion of remedies in judicial review actions. My other areas of interest are E-Commerce Law, Information Technology Law, Public Service Law, Administrative Law, Corporate Finance Law and Law and Legal Systems.

When not working, I enjoy taking trips to Saint Lucia, where I grew up, or Martinique, where I was born, to visit friends and family. I also enjoy visiting friends in other Caribbean islands, particularly Jamaica and Trinidad and Tobago. When I am not teaching, researching, or writing, I can be found at a local bar with friends, enjoying a nice rum and coke, or at the beach (in the shade, of course, usually editing one article or other) on the West Coast of Barbados.

Profile of JIPLP writers: Peter A. Jabaly

In this, the second in an occasional series of features on contributors to JIPLP (click here for the first, featuring Charley Macedo), we introduce Peter Anthony Jabaly, a Washington, DC attorney and graduate of Rutgers Law School. Like Charley, Peter has frequently contributed Current Intelligence notes to JIPLP, as well as a recent article.

Peter tells us that he is passionate about IP.  As a former student of Michael A. Carrier, one of the most highly respected IP attorneys and professors around, Pete (as his friends affectionately call him) is most interested in copyright and trade marks. However, he isn’t shy about taking on difficult patent issues on behalf of Zero Waste, Inc. where he assists the renewable energy firm in patent licensing issues and other complex corporate matters such as restructuring and government affairs.  Dealing with the commercial phase of the patent protection process, Peter approaches the inventor to either taking a licence or buying the technology outright, systematically going through the valuation, negotiation, and drafting of the agreement.

Another side to Peter's professional activity involves representing indigent clients in pro bono cases in a variety of fields, finding consumer advocacy the best way for him to give back to his community and to hone his negotiation skills. He first acquired an interest in negotiation when he represented his law school in the Willem C. Vis International Commercial Arbitration Moot held each year in Vienna, Austria. One of his most loved books is about negotiation: Roger Fisher and William L. Ury’s Getting to YES: Negotiating Agreement Without Giving In.

Peter also works closely on a pro bono basis with a non-profit organization that aims to educate U.S. policymakers in the crucial role they can play in building a peaceful future for the millions who live in Lebanon and Israel. As a graduate of George Mason University with a B.A. degree in government & international politics, he remains very interested in foreign affairs and has also passed the State Department’s notoriously difficult Foreign Service Officer test in the hope that he may serve his country abroad in the not-so-distant future.

Peter enjoys traveling whenever he can. His favourite destinations are Eastern Europe, the Middle East and the southeastern United States. Peter lived in Paris for a semester during his junior year at University and visits every year to participate in the Sorbonne reunions. Being trilingual he hopes that, with the broadening internationalization of the IP field, he’ll be able to utilize his linguistic and cultural fluency to increase IP protection and awareness in areas of the globe that have ordinarily resisted the trend. A sort of niche interest is IP protection (or its lack) in the Middle East. Peter is visiting Beirut, Lebanon, this December to get a better sense of the landscape. There, he will be meeting with a number of IP firms to discuss just that.

Traveling as a tourist is never appealing; instead, Peter likes to visit friends he has acquired over his years abroad. Whether in Warsaw or Paris, these friends provide an insight that he finds invaluable. Many of them are attorneys who generously offer their views on the developments in their own jurisdictions. Peter has, admittedly, learned much from the comparative study of the law.

When Peter isn’t problem-solving, he’s relaxing with a good pick-up game of soccer. He likes watching Champions and Premier League games when he can, but it's difficult with the time difference. In his other free time, he’s driving to the Shenandoah National Park with some friends for a hike, white-water rafting, or some fishing. He’s recently made the purchase of a lifetime -- a motorbike -- taking his Ducati Monster whenever the elements allow. He enjoys the feeling he gets when he is able to navigate smoothly through the heavy traffic in the District of Columbia.

Profile of JIPLP writers: Charles R. Macedo

In this, the first in an occasional series of features on contributors to JIPLP, we introduce Charles R. Macedo (partner at Amster, Rothstein & Ebenstein LLP). Apart from authoring numerous Current Intelligence pieces and being something of a public speaker, Charley is author of The Corporate Insider's Guide to US Patent Practice (published by OUP, here) and also writes for other publications.

So what sort of man is Charley?  When he is not off being a lawyer, he is at home in the suburbs of New York City with his wife and two sons. He loves to read series books that let him watch the characters develop and grow, whether it be Harry Potter, Percy Jackson, Mitch Rapp, or Ethan Gage. Having an educational background in Physics and History (in addition to Law), Charley also enjoys reading science fiction and historical novels.

On most weekends when school is in session, Charley can be found on the baseball field, soccer field, or basketball court coaching children with special needs. During the school year, he also donates time to teach high school seniors in New York City about patents and works with them on writing their own patent applications.

One reason why Charley writes so many articles and makes so many presentations is that he simply loves it. Many a weeken,d when he wakes up early in the morning he can be found in front of his computer writing another CI or Guest Column, or preparing a presentation to explain complex concepts in an easy-to-understand manner. He thinks of himself as an interpreter who is fluent in many different languages -- technical jargon spoken by inventors/clients, patentese spoken at the PTO, legalese spoken by courts and attorneys, business jargon (like ROI) spoken by suits and, most importantly, plain English (the American variety) spoken by the rest of us. His writings often seek to translate the complex legal principles of today's intellectual property law into the vernacular for the public to read and appreciate.

Over the past two decades since Charley graduated from law school, and almost three decades since he first started working in the intellectual property law field, he has witnessed the field of patent law grow and to some extent wane with the Federal Circuit. He has seen the development by the Regan, Bush Sr. and Clinton Administrations of domestic and international policies which focused on strengthening intellectual property protection in the US and around the world, with the concomitant growth in value of such protection. During George W's years, failings in the system began to emerge, the PTO got overwhelmed, the courts were challenged on how to value the merit of intellectual property protection, and the press criticized particular patents such as how to make a crustless peanut butter and jelly sandwich, a method of swinging on a swing, and a method for purchasing books at Amazon.com with one click, which sold a lot of papers. The US Supreme Court suddenly started to second guess decades of jurisprudence on patent law that came out of the Federal Circuit, and murky lines of jurisprudence began to be redeveloped on issues like when an invention is obvious, when an injunction should issue, who can bring a declaratory junction action and what types of processes are patent-eligible, etc.

Over the next ten years, Charley thinks the law in the US will need to grow to recognize that good patents are a good thing that should be upheld and reasonably valued, while bad patents are a bad thing that should not. While bright line rules that the Federal Circuit has been developing have provided greater predictability for the PTO and patent users, the US Supreme Court's interventions have eschewed such rules, and will likely continue to do so in the future, resulting in vaguer standards that are reminiscent of "I know it when I see it" tests famously applied in First Amendment pornography cases.

To learn more about Charley's professional background click here.  To contact him directly, whether to discuss intellectual property law questions or coaching techniques for children with special needs, you can email him here.