Advisory Board
- Rich Belgard
- Joe Beyers
- Samantha Jane Funnell
- Roy Levin
- Don Merino
- Richard Lawton Thurston
- Mallun Yen
CLE Approved
for 13.5 Credit Hours!Event Chairmen
EE Times
Rick Merritt has nineteen years experience writing about the computer and communications industries. Since 2001, Rick has been the editor at large of EE Times, the leading news weekly for engineers and technical managers. EE Times was the 1997 winner of the Computer Press Association award for best trade newspaper. Previously, Rick was the founding editor of OEM Magazine. OEM was a winner of a Jesse H. Neal award for investigative reporting in 1996, a winner of Folio Magazine's Editorial Excellence award in 1995 and a runner up for best trade magazine in the Computer Press Association awards in 1996. Previous to the launch of OEM Magazine, Rick was a bureau editor for Electronic Engineering Times and Electronic World News in Hong Kong. From 1988-1991 he served as editor of Asian Computer Monthly, a regional magazine for IS managers in Asia.
Semiconductor Insights
Mike McLean, Vice President of IPinsights at Semiconductor Insights, was promoted to his current role in July 2005 after holding a series of progressively senior positions. Mr. McLean’s technical and management posts have included Director of Intellectual Property, Patent Engineer, IP Account Manager, and IP Operations Manager since joining the company in 1996. Mr. McLean led the creation of the Patent Development Business Unit within Semiconductor Insights. As well, Mr. McLean has worked extensively with the technology practices of major law firms, the in-house corporate counsel teams of key technology companies, and external licensing agencies.
Mr. McLean holds a Bachelor of Science, Engineering with First Class Honors from Queens University and is a licensed member of the Association of Professional Engineers of Ontario. In recognition of his strong technical and business acumen, Mr. McLean has served as an expert witness in several intellectual property suits on behalf of Semiconductor Insights’ clients.
2008 Advisory Board
Rich Belgard has been active in the computer industry for more than 30 years. Over these years, he designed and managed the development of computer architectures at Burroughs, Data General, Tandem Computers and Rational Software, including hardware, software and microarchitecture. He is co-inventor on 18 patents; sole inventor on 5 patents and currently has other pending patents.
Rich is the past Chairman and Vice-Chairman of the Association for Computing Machinery (ACM)'s Special Interest Group on Microarchitectures, and former Vice-Chair of the Institute of Electrical and Electronic Engineers (IEEE) Technical Committee on Microprogramming and Microarchitectures. Rich is an IEEE Fellow.
Rich has participated in intellectual property lawsuits, including patent, copyright, and trade secret. Rich has testified in many of these lawsuits, both as an expert for a party and also as a court-appointed expert. He has been involved in many "clean-room" development projects. Rich has written articles and presented lectures on the subject of reverse engineering, including how to perform it and how to prevent it. His current interests focus on technology patents.
Rich is a contributing editor of The Microprocessor Report, where he authors the continuing column, Patent Watch. Rich has been extensively quoted on patent and technology issues in The Wall Street Journal, Fortune Magazine, The Red Herring, New Scientist, The San Jose Mercury News, EE Times, Smart Money.com, C/NET News.com, TheStreet.com, and others.
Rich currently consults for computer manufacturers, software companies, investor groups and as an expert and consultant to law firms. He is a director of private software and hardware companies.
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Hewlett-Packard Company
Joe Beyers is the Vice President of Intellectual Property Licensing. In this role Joe is responsible for creating and driving an HP intellectual property strategy and for driving initiatives to increase the value realized by HP from its IP portfolio.
Previously Joe was Vice President and General Manger of Strategic Planning and Business Development for the Hewlett-Packard's Computer Systems Business. Joe was responsible for strategic and tactical planning for HP's computer systems business that included HP's PC, workstation, server, storage and software businesses. He also was responsible for coordinating Computer Systems related business development processes. These included acquisitions, equity investments and major partnerships. In addition to his Computer Systems responsibility, Joe was part of HP's Strategy Council which drove top level HP corporate strategy and cross company initiatives.
Prior to this Computer Systems role, Joe was the Vice President and General Manager of HP's Internet Business Unit (IBU). This organization was responsible for HP's Internet software products including Internet security, imaging, embedded JAVA, E-Commerce software, E-Business solutions and Internet financial transaction systems (VeriFone).
Previously, Joe was General Manager of Strategic Programs for HP's Computer Organization. In this role he was responsible for driving key strategies and initiatives across HP's $30B Computer Organization. This included HP's Internet, networking and software strategies. He also initiated and managed several key HP external relationships, including those with Microsoft, Netscape, Cisco and Intel.
As Director of the Integrated Circuit Design Technology Center, Beyers was responsible for a wide range of integrated-circuit design and CAD tools programs and businesses. As part of this work, he was the lead inventor of the world's first 32-bit VLSI computer chip. This chip contained 450,000 transistors and was several times more complex than any VLSI chip at the time. In recognition of this achievement he received the best paper award at the International Solid State Circuits Conference (ISSC) in 1982. He then initiated HP's first reduced instruction set architecture (RISC) VLSI chip design, which is today the basis of HP's PA-RISC microprocessors.
Joe's first assignment in HP was the development of the operating system for the HP 9825 desktop computer. In this work he received a patent on the fundamental concept of a user being able to use the keyboard of a desktop computer while an application is running on that computer.
In addition to his 26 years within HP, Beyers also spent two years as Vice President of Strategic Marketing at Taligent a software joint venture between IBM, HP and Apple.
Beyers holds a MS in Electrical Engineering from the University of Illinois ('75) and a BS in Computer Engineering ('74). He also completed MBA courses at the Kellogg Business School, Darden Business School and Golden Gate University.
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ARM Ltd, Cambridge
Sam has an Honours Degree in Electronic Engineering with Computer Science and a Masters Degree in Intellectual Property, both from the University of London. She spent seven years with BTG in London and qualified as both a Chartered Patent Attorney and a European Patent Attorney in that time. She then spent time with Lucent Technologies and in Private Practice. Sam joined ARM in February 2002 as their first in house patent attorney and is now Chief Patent Counsel.
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Microsoft Corp.
Roy Levin joined Microsoft Corp. in August 2001 to found the Microsoft Research Silicon Valley lab.
From 1996 until he joined Microsoft, Levin was director of Compaq’s Systems Research Center in Palo Alto, Calif. Previously, he was a senior researcher at the center from its founding in 1984, by Digital Equipment Corp. During those years, he was a primary contributor and project leader for the Topaz programming environment and its microkernel operating system, the first to provide high-performance, lightweight process scheduling and interprocess communication on a multiprocessor workstation. He also was project leader and a primary contributor to Vesta, a software configuration management system embodying novel technology and tools for source control, version management and building of large software systems.
Before joining Digital, Levin was a principal scientist at Xerox’s Palo Alto Research Center. He was project co-leader and a principal developer of Cedar, an experimental programming environment for high-performance workstations. Cedar set the standard (c. 1982) for integrated programming environments for algol-tradition languages, incorporating significant advances in language technology, file systems, network communication (RPC) and user interfaces. Levin also was a co-developer of Grapevine, a landmark electronic mail system.
Levin received his Ph.D. in computer science from Carnegie Mellon University and his bachelor of science in mathematics from Yale University. He is a member of the Association for Computing Machinery (ACM), and a former chair of ACM SIGOPS. He is author or co-author of approximately 20 technical papers, books and patents.
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Intellectual Ventures
Don Merino is general manager, intellectual property, at Intellectual Ventures where he focuses on a variety of projects relating to intellectual property and invention.
Prior to joining Intellectual Ventures, Dr. Merino spent 4 years at Intel Corporation where he was director, strategic business development. In this position, Dr. Merino was responsible for managing the Intel licensing program.
Prior to his work at Intel Dr. Merino was director of licensing for General Instrument. He received his B.S. from the US Naval Academy in 1984 and his M.E.M.E and Ph.D. from Stevens Institute of Technology.
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Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company
Dr. Richard Thurston was appointed as Vice President and General Counsel of TSMC from January, 2002, and is responsible for legal and intellectual property management.
Dr. Thurston is well-known for his global experience in commercial, technology and international law.
Prior to joining TSMC, Dr. Thurston was a Partner at Kelt Capital Partners, LP, Addison, Texas and the Dallas, Texas law firm Haynes and Boone since 1996. His practice covered general corporate matters, technology-related transactions, mergers and acquisitions, joint ventures and divestitures, venture capital investments, foreign trade and investment, and the global protection of intellectual property rights. Before Dr. Thurston joined Haynes and Boone, he served as the Regional Counsel, Asia Pacific and Vice President, Corporate Staff, Assistant General Counsel for 12 years at Texas Instruments, where he spent time in both their Dallas headquarters and Tokyo. He was responsible for both the legal activities of Texas Instruments throughout the Asia Pacific region and merger and acquisition activities. The scope of his legal experiences included foreign trade and investment, technology transfer, general corporate matters, intellectual property rights issues, management of corporate entity affairs, contracts, strategic alliances, and dispute resolution for 40 different subsidiaries. Prior to his post at Texas Instruments, Dr. Thurston was an Associate at Duane, Morris & Heckscher, Philadelphia, PA., U.S.A.
Dr. Thurston graduated Cum Laude with a B.A. degree in History from Alma College, and an M.A. degree and a Ph.D. degree in East Asian Studies from University of Virginia in the U.S. He received a J.D. degree from Rutgers School of Law at Camden, New Jersey in the U.S. in 1980. Dr. Thurston also studied R.O.C. Law at Soochow University, 1975-1976, while researching his Ph.D. dissertation: Civil Law Reform in China, 1906-1930. As a bilingual professional, Dr. Thurston is fluent both in English and in Mandarin. He also taught courses in Entrepreneurism at the Southern Methodist School of Law and the School of Management, University of Texas, both in Dallas, Texas, U.S.A. Since September, 2002, Dr. Thurston teaches law courses in Soochow University and National Chiao Tung University in Taiwan.
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Cisco Systems
Mallun Yen is Vice President, Worldwide Intellectual Property at Cisco Systems. As Cisco's Chief IP Counsel, Mallun leads a team that is responsible for patent and trademark licensing, prosecution and litigation as well as intellectual property strategy and standards IPR. After earning a law degree from Boalt Hall, Mallun clerked for The Honorable Ronald M. Whyte for the U.S. District Court in San Jose and then joined Weil Gotshal & Manges, where she specialized in patent litigation and technology transactions. Prior to joining Cisco in 2002, Mallun served as Chief Counsel at an optical networking company located in San Jose, CA.
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