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Its more than just design patents

Join AIPLA for its first design rights summit and get insights from leading practitioners from around the world on the latest developments in copyright, trade dress and design patents.  In this online age, protecting the appearance of products has never been more important. 

This Summit is being held in conjunction with the Annual Meeting. 

Register for both events and save $50 off registration.

Click Here to register for both the Summit and the 2025 Annual Meeting

To register for the Design Rights Summit on its own, please use the register button on this page.

Thank you to our program sponsors!

Agenda:

Registration Rates:

AIPLA Member: $145
AIPLA Student: $25
Government/AIPLA Academic: $95

Non-Member: $395

Save $50 off these prices by registering for the Annual Meeting at the same time!

2025 Annual Meeting Registration & Cancellation Policies Apply

Speakers

• Amankwatia, Scott

  The Marbury Law Group | Associate

  Scott B. Amankwatia is an associate attorney at The Marbury Law Group, where his practice focuses on intellectual property litigation, patent preparation and prosecution, and design rights. He has experience across a range of technologies, including mechanical, software, and medical devices. Scott serves as the Pro Bono Subcommittee Chair of AIPLA’s Patent Pro Bono Committee and is a member of AIPLA’s Design Rights Committee. He earned his J.D. and Intellectual Property Law Certificate from the University of New Hampshire Franklin Pierce School of Law, and holds a B.E. in Mechanical Engineering from the University of Delaware, where he concentrated in biomechanics.
• Carani, Christopher V.

  McAndrews, Held & Malloy | Shareholder

  Christopher V. Carani is a Shareholder at McAndrews and has been at the firm since 1995. He practices in all areas of intellectual property law with a particular emphasis on design law, which regards the protection and enforcement of rights in the appearance of consumer products. Chris has extensive experience litigating design patent cases, including representations before U.S. district courts, the Federal Circuit, the U.S. Supreme Court, and the International Trade Commission. In each year since 2019, Chris has been named to the IAM Strategy 300: The World’s Leading IP Strategists list, with IAM magazine noting that he is “one of the world’s leading design patent strategists,” one of the U.S.’s “pre-eminent design law experts,” and “widely regarded as one of the country’s premier design patent lawyers.” In 2023, in Columbia Sportswear v. Seirus, Chris successfully argued a case of first impression before the Federal Circuit Court of Appeals, creating new law on the issue of the proper scope of comparison prior art used in the design patent infringement analysis.
• Davis, Theodore

  Kilpatrick Townsend & Stockton, LLP | Partner

  Ted Davis is a partner in the Atlanta office of Kilpatrick Townsend & Stockton LLP, where he has practiced trademark, copyright, false advertising, and unfair competition law since 1990. He is a past member of the American Intellectual Property Law Association’s Board of Directors and currently serves as an editor of the A.I.P.L.A. Quarterly Law Journal. He also is a current member of the American Bar Association’s Board of Governors and a former member of the International Trademark Association’s Executive Committee. He frequently serves as an expert witness in trademark-related matters and is an adjunct professor at the Emory University School of Law.
• de Andrés Gómez, Paula

  Berggren | Partner

  Paula is a Partner at Berggren and leads the firm's office in Alicante, Spain. She has over 23 years of experience in the IP field with a primary focus on design rights and for the past 15 years she has offered strategic counsel to both national and international clients and has managed extensive design portfolios.
• Nakamura, Tomohiro (Tom)

  Konishi & Nakamura | Managing Partner

  Managing Partner, Patent Attorney, Konishi & Nakamura. Field in Practices: Clearance, prosecutions, litigations at the Tribunal & IP High Court, proceeding with recordation of IP rights and enforcement at Japan Customs, mainly for trademarks, designs, unfair competition, copyrights and domain names.
• Okolie, Sonia

  Banner & Witcoff | Attorney

  Sonia Okolie is an attorney at Banner & Witcoff, where she primarily handles design patent, trademark, and copyright prosecution and counseling for several Fortune 500 clients. As a class B shareholder, she leverages her ten years of experience at Banner, where she originally began working as a design patent paralegal. Sonia attended college at Georgetown University, law school at The George Washington University, and currently works at Banner’s Washington, DC office.
• Ritscher, Michael

  MLL Legal AG | Founding Member

  Michael Ritscher studied at the University of Zurich and received his PhD, then passed the bar exam, completed an LL.M. at Georgetown University and, after research stays at Stanford University and the Max Planck Institute for Innovation and Competition in Munich, founded the intellectual property team of the Swiss law firm MLL Legal AG, which he has headed ever since.  As a former lecturer at the ETH Zurich and at the University of Lucerne and as acting president of the INGRES Swiss Institute for the Protection of Intellectual Property, Michael Ritscher has, in addition to his work as an attorney and arbitrator in national and international disputes and as special judge at the Zurich Court of Commerce, also dealt scientifically with trademark law and all other areas of intellectual property law.

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