Champions of IP: Judges Michel & Newman | IPWatchdog Unleashed

This week on IPWatchdog Unleashed we present the remarks made during the Award Ceremony at IPWatchdog LIVE 2025 on March 3, 2025. Once again, this year we presented two awards at IPWatchdog LIVE; the Paul Michel Award and the Pauline Newman Award. These two awards give us a special opportunity for us to do a couple different things. First and most directly, they enable us to recognize the extremely distinguished careers of the recipients of the awards. But second, this gives us an opportunity to recognize the distinguished careers of two people who have been very instrumental in my development as a professional, and who have been instrumental on our development as a company.

A number of years ago I reached out to Judge Michel with an idea. I asked if he would mind if I created an award in your name. Judge Michel was very receptive, and we created the Paul Michel Award, which is awarded annually to someone within the IP community who has selflessly served the best interests of the industry and its members as a respected leader, mentor, and advocate on behalf of fairness and for the best interests of the intellectual property system. Past recipients of the award include Hon. David Kappos, Hon. Andrei Iancu, Brian O’Shaughnessy and Joseph Allen.

And then several years later I decided to try and do the same thing for Judge Newman, and she was very receptive as well. So, we created the Pauline Newman Award, which is given each year to recognize the unique achievements of one patent attorney over their career. The award recognizes leadership, excellence, influence, integrity, vision, and wisdom. Past recipients of the award include Henry Hadad and Phil Johnson.

This year we were pleased to recognize Robert Taylor as the 2025 recipient of the Paul Michel Award. It is hard to imagine someone more deserving of the Paul Michel Award than Bob Taylor, who throughout his legal career has time and time again advocated on behalf of innovators, particularly those entrepreneurial innovators who take great risk and found high-tech startup companies, which are the lifeblood of the U.S. economy. Bob currently serves as General Counsel for the Alliance of U.S. Startups and Inventors for Jobs and is a member of the Advisory Board for the Bayh-Dole Coalition.

“Bob Taylor is the most unusual leader in the patent world because he combines deep knowledge of every related field. He’s an expert in patents, investment incentives, technological innovation, court litigation, antitrust law, and the broader competition law,” Judge Michel said in his introduction. “Now I read briefs for pleasure when they’re written by Bob Taylor. He often sends me a draft and I just grin the whole way through reading it… I suggest to all of you, and this is the best audience, this is the jury, really, that it would be hard to find a more deserving recipient of this award than Bob Taylor.”

“It’s always an honor to be associated with Judge Michelle and who has been a major inspiration for many of us for quite a long time and to be added to the short list of other people who have received this award,” Taylor said.

We were also pleased to recognize Steven Caltrider as the 2025 recipient of the Pauline Newman Award. Steve has been a leader in the intellectual property community for nearly 40 years and is widely recognized by his peers as one of the preeminent in-house IP leaders in the world. After more than 35 years with Eli Lilly and Company and rising to the position of Vice President and General Patent Counsel, Steve was not done. In 2022, Steve moved to the Dana Farber Cancer Institute, where he currently serves as Vice President and Chief Intellectual Property Officer.

“The important things that have characterized our nation and our universe are the fruits of leadership of a few of us,” Judge Newman said as she introduced Caltrider.  “And recently, I came just through circumstances of, I’ll call it fate, to meet and to talk with our recipient of this leadership award, and to watch and come to understand how he manifests and epitomizes the extraordinary strength and quality and style of leadership in his actions in the ABA, in his standing up for integrity and the future, his defense of the nation. He has opened doors, presented promises that, with his leadership, are benefiting all of us in the nation.”

“Wow, I feel like I need to rethink my remarks entirely,” Caltrider began. “I am just truly humbled at the opportunity to receive the Pauline Newman Award. I feel especially honored, and I don’t think that I shared this story with you ever before, Judge Newman, that, because Judge Newman had a very significant role, unbeknownst to her, on my development as a young lawyer.”

To listen to the entire Michel and Newman Awards’ Ceremony you can download the podcast from wherever podcasts are available.

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